he? Doesn’t he stop over near you, somewhere?”
“Here I am,” said Harvey, taken by surprise. “What do you want?”
“Why, I’ve got a letter for you,” said the postmaster. “It has been here three days. I couldn’t find out where you were.”
“Well, that’s odd,” exclaimed Harvey, stepping back and receiving the envelope. “I never got one before. Say, we came over for something, after all.”
He tore open the envelope and read the letter enclosed.
“Whew!” he exclaimed as he finished. “That’s tough.” And he gave a disconsolate whistle.
“What’s the matter? Nothing bad, I hope,” asked Henry Burns.
In reply, Harvey handed him the letter. It was dated from Boston, and read as follows:
“My dear Jack: – Sorry to have to write you bad news, but you are big enough to stand it, I had to work hard when I was a boy, and perhaps you may now, but you’ll come out all right in the end. I don’t know just where I stand, myself. Investments have gone wrong, and Saunders has brought suit in court, claiming title to the land where the mine is. May beat him out. Don’t know. He is a rascal, but may win.
“Now I haven’t got a dollar to send you, and don’t see where I’ll get any all summer for you, as I shall need every cent to pay bills. I have got to go out to borrow money to pay lawyers, too, to fight the case.
“Too bad, but you will have to come home, or shift for yourself for the summer. Let me know, and I’ll send money for your fare, if you are coming.
An hour later, Jack Harvey and Henry Burns sat in the comfortable cabin of the Viking, talking matters over. The yacht swung lazily at anchor in the still cove. A fire burned in the little stove, and the smoke wreathed out of a funnel on the starboard side. The boys were superintending the baking of a pan of muffins in a sheet-iron oven, while two swinging-lanterns gave them light.
“I declare I don’t know what to do about it,” said Harvey. “You see, I never thought about getting along without money before. All I have had to do is just ask for it. Now, you see, I’m behind on my allowance. We paid Reed thirty-five dollars, you know, for wintering and painting the boat, and something more for some new pieces of rigging. That, and what I’ve spent for clothes, has cleaned me out.”
“Yes, but I owe you twelve dollars on the boat account, which I’m going to pay as soon as I receive my own allowance from my aunt,” said Henry Burns.
“Well, that won’t go very far,” responded Harvey, gloomily. “We owe – or shall owe – for the freight on that box of provisions that’s coming from Benton; we have got to hire a tender to take the place of the old one I sold last fall. We can’t keep on borrowing this one all summer – ”
“Never mind,” interrupted Henry Burns. “You know it costs us scarcely anything to live down here. We can catch all the fish and lobsters we want, dig clams, and all that sort of thing. All we need to buy is a little meal and flour and coffee and sugar from time to time, and we’ll do that all right on my allowance.”
“That’s kind in you, Henry,” said Harvey, warmly, “but I don’t quite like the idea of living all summer on you.”
“Why not?” demanded Henry Burns, and added, quickly, “You used to provide everything for all your crew last summer, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes, I did,” replied Harvey. “Ha! ha! catch one of them buying anything. But of course they couldn’t buy much of anything, anyway. They hadn’t any money. But somehow this is different. You see, – well – the fact is, I’m not quite used to being hard up. And I don’t exactly like to take it. Of course, I know just how you mean it, too.”
“Yes, but think how small our expenses need be if we are careful,” urged Henry Burns. “We live right aboard here all the time, you know.”
“Yes,” answered Harvey, “but it all counts up more than you think, especially when one is short of money. You can’t run a big boat like this all summer without expense. It’s a rope here and a block there, and a spare anchor we need, and a lot of little things all the time. I know how it was on the Surprise.”
Their conversation was interrupted at this point by a voice close alongside. The canoe had glided quietly up, and the next moment Tom and Bob were descending into the cabin.
“My, but you chaps have elegant quarters down here,” exclaimed Tom. “We envy you your summer aboard here, don’t we, Bob?”
Henry Burns and Harvey, somewhat taken aback, made no reply, and looked embarrassed.
“Why, what’s up?” asked Tom, observing something was wrong. “No more trouble, I hope.”
Harvey explained the situation.
“That need not be so bad,” said Tom. “It doesn’t cost but little to live here. We spend scarcely anything, do we, Bob? We can lend you something to help you through. You don’t want to think of giving up the summer.”
“I dare say I could stick it out all right,” said Harvey, “if I was just camping once more. That doesn’t cost much. It is this boat that bothers me. We can’t run it for nothing.”
“Well, then,” exclaimed Henry Burns, vigorously, with more demonstrativeness than was usual with him, “I’ll tell you what we will do. We’ll make the boat work. We will make it pay its own way, and pay us something besides. We’ll fit out and go down among the islands fishing, and take our fish over to Stoneland and sell them, the same as the fishermen do. There won’t be a fortune in it, with a boat no bigger than this, but it will support us, and more too, after paying all expenses.”
“Henry,” cried Harvey, gratefully, “you’re a brick! I thought of that once, and I’d have proposed it if this had been the old Surprise; but I didn’t know as you would be willing to do it with this boat. It dirties a craft up so.”
“That doesn’t hurt a boat any,” said Henry Burns. “The fishermen down around Wilton’s Harbour take out sailing parties all summer, and their boats are always handsome and clean, and they don’t smell fishy. And the men always use them for fishing in the fall and spring, when the fishing is at its best. It simply means that we have got to take out all the nice fittings from the cabin, stow them away somewhere on shore, fit out with some tackle, and go ahead. At the end of the summer we will overhaul the Viking from deck to keelson, take out every piece of ballast in her, clean it and dry it and put it back, and paint the yacht over after we wash everything inside and out. She will be just as fine as she was before.”
“That’s great!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “You can do it all right, too. I wish we had a boat. We’d go along with you, wouldn’t we, Bob?”
“I’d like nothing better,” answered Bob.
“Then come along with us,” said Harvey. “We really need two more to handle this boat properly. You can fit yourselves out with fishing-tackle, and we’ll all share in the catch.”
“Hooray! we’ll do it,” cried Bob. “But we don’t want a share of the catch. We will be glad enough to go for the fun of it.”
“Yes, but this is part business,” said Henry Burns. “You must have some share in every trip you make with us. How will two-thirds for us and a third for you do, as we own the boat?”
“That is more than fair,” replied Tom.
“Then it’s a bargain, eh, Jack?” said Henry; and, as the other gave hearty assent, he added, “We’ll go about it right away to-morrow, if the weather is good.”
When George Warren heard of the plan the next day, however, he was not equally elated. “It’s the thing to do, I guess,” he said, but added, “It’s going to keep you away from Southport; that is the only drawback.”
“No, only part of the