The Rival Campers Afloat; or, The Prize Yacht VikingSmith, Ruel Perley
General
The Rival Campers Afloat; or, The Prize Yacht Viking
Smith, Ruel Perley
Boats and boating -- Juvenile fiction; Sea stories
By five o’clock, however, the sounds of men and boats had them awake
again; and by another half-hour they were breakfasting on their way out
of the harbour, beating against a light southerly.
“Do you know the fishing-grounds, Jack?” inquired Henry Burns.
“Only in a general way,” replied Harvey. “But we’ll follow the others,
and get in somewhere near them.”
They stood out of the harbour and headed down the coast of the island,
which extended seaward thus for some four miles. Harvey, at the wheel,
was studying carefully a chart of the waters; Henry Burns and Tom and
Bob, arrayed in oilskins, were busily engaged in “shucking” clams into
some wooden buckets.
Presently an unexpected hail came across the water to them from a
sailboat they had overhauled.
“Why, hello,” called Harvey, and added to his companions, “Here’s luck.
It’s Will Hackett, Jeff’s brother. You know Jeff, who carries the mails
in his packet.”
“What are you chaps doing way down here? Aren’t you lost?” asked the
other, a stalwart, red-faced youth, who, with a crew composed of one
small boy, was navigating a rough-looking sloop that looked as though it
had seen a score of hard summers.
Harvey explained.
“Well, you won’t get rich,” said Will Hackett, bringing his craft in to
head along with them. “But I’ll show you where to fish. The depth of
water makes all the difference around here. They call me lucky, but
there’s something in knowing where to drop a line. I’m down only for the
day, but you follow me around and you’ll know where to go next time.”
When they had told him of the adventure of the night before, Will Hackett
slapped a heavy fist down upon his knee.
“Good for you!” he cried. “So you’ve run foul of old Jim Martel, have
you? Why, I offered to thrash him and his two boys only three weeks ago,
for hanging around after dark where I had a trawl set. They come from
over eastward, and quarrel with everybody; and I wouldn’t trust one of
them with a rotten rope. You’d better keep away from them, though. He’s
got a hot temper, has Jim Martel.”
They were in the swell from the open sea now, and the _Viking_ and its
companion, the _Gracie_, were lifting and dipping amid the long, rolling
waves. About them, and ahead here and there, clouds of spray, cast like
chaff into the air, told of reefs; sometimes marked with a spindle, or a
cask set on the top of a pole, if it lay near the course; sometimes with
a thin point of the ledge rising a few feet above water.
Some three miles down the coast of Loon Island a reef of several rods in
length broke the force of the waves from seaward; and as these dashed in
upon it they crashed into a thousand particles, which gleamed transiently
with the colours of the rainbow as the sun shone upon the drops. Close
under the lee of this reef went Will Hackett, and cast anchor a few rods
away, not far from another boat, already at anchor. The _Viking_
followed, and likewise anchored at a little distance, and sails were
furled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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