are spaced wrong. I recognized Blake’s only by the little beach and the square that marks this house. But anyway it’s a good clue. I want Dad and Poke to see it.”
“David? Can’t I help?” There was no mistaking the longing in Sally’s voice.
“Maybe.” Her brother snuffed out the candle and flung open the door. “Look, Sally. The storm is over.”
They gazed out upon a fresh and shining world. The sun sparkled on the spruces and the spruces breathed in the light wind. For an instant the two stood silent in the doorway. Then David said, “We’d better get going.”
Down on the little beach the Lobster Boy lay safe but stranded, yards from the ebbing tide. David and Sally removed their shoes and socks and rolled up their jeans. Then they dragged the dory down the flats and into the water.
Soon they were beating their way through the cove toward Fishermen’s Dock. Sally, with Jonathan’s chart held proudly in her lap, half turned in the bow to watch their progress. As they entered the inner harbor David cut down his speed as usual. They were halfway to the town landing when they noticed the boat — a powerful mahogany inboard, new to the cove. It was roaring away from the yacht club float too fast for courtesy or safety, and it was bearing straight down on them. For a moment David stared, waiting for the other to check his speed, to change his course.
Then he shouted to Sally, “Hold on!” He pushed the stick to starboard as far as he dared, but in a flash the newcomer followed them. For a chilling instant it seemed that the two boats must crash head-on. Then the faster boat shied easily to one side, leaving the little dory pitching crazily in its wake.
David steadied the Lobster Boy on her course and said nothing. But his lips pressed angrily together as the tall boy in the other boat shouted, “Quit holding up traffic!” Then, with an insolent burst of power, the cruiser continued out of sight around the point.
Wrathfully, Sally stared after the show-off. “He could have upset us.”
David’s face was grim. “He practically did.” But there was much work to be done and the day was ending. Talk could wait.
With the motor idling, they drew alongside the lobster car, a padlocked floating crate where David kept his catch until he sold it to the hotel. Into this he emptied the day’s catch, the mottled shellfish splashing one by one into the dark water.
Sally rinsed out the bait pail, then helped swab the dory, dipping the sponge over the side into the cold water of the harbor. Finally, they had made the Lobster Boy fast for the night, and David led the way up the ramp in silence.
A genial, foghorn voice hailed them from the wharf, and they glanced up to see Uncle Charlie. Leaning on a piling and smoking his pipe, he looked as seamed and as comfortable as an old glove.
“How’s the haulin’?” he shouted, as if a large expanse of water still separated them.
David grinned and raised his voice. “There’s nothing wrong with the hauling, Uncle Charlie. I’ve averaged one and a half to a trap for ‘most a week now.”
“No need to yell,” bellowed the old lobsterman, and he tinkered cheerfully with his hearing aid. “At thirty-six cents a pound, that ain’t hay, is it?”
“I had a good teacher,” David told him generously.
“Shucks, son, you’re a natural-born salt. Which is a sight more’n I can say for that young trouble-maker that just went out.”
Sally was still blazing with indignation. “Did you see what happened?”
Uncle Charlie snorted. “I see the whole thing. That was Roddie McNeill, and somebody ought to paddle him good or else teach him how to act in a boat. Foolin’ around like that, and headin’ out at this hour.”
David frowned. “McNeill? The same Mr. McNeill who bought Grindstone Point from Dad?”
“Ayuh. Same McNeill.” Uncle Charlie knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “They’re putting up a big house down to the point.”
David nodded, bitterly feeling the loss of Blake land. Then Uncle Charlie shouted a fresh bit of news.
“Young Roddie aims to do some haulin’, so they say.”
Sally broke in, “Hauling! Why, that smarty-cat doesn’t know one end of a boat from the other.”
“He’ll learn,” Uncle Charlie said dryly. “Haulin’s hard work, and it’ll mebbe make a man of him,” he added.
David’s heart sank at the prospect of Roddie McNeill hanging around the cove. “Where does he keep his boat and his gear?” he asked.
“Likely over to the yacht club.” Losing interest, Uncle Charlie put his pipe away. He ignored the town clock that rose above the elms on Main Street and squinted up at the sky. “Close to suppertime. I’ll give you young’uns a lift home. But first, step over to the shack a minute. I got something for you.” The old lobster-man was pleased with himself. He was about to play Santa Claus. David knew the signs.
Together, the three crossed the wharf and crunched up the clamshell path to the sheds where the lobstermen kept their gear.
The old man had recently given up lobstering in order to tend his antique shop nearby. “Not that I’m gitting too old to haul,” he told everyone loudly. “I ain’t.” And to prove it, he still maintained his gear shed and hauled a few traps whenever he had a hankering for a lobster stew. This gave him excuse enough for spending his spare time around Fishermen’s Dock with his pipe and his cronies.
Between the rows of traps piled outside to dry, they approached the old shed, as familiar to the children as home. For they had often gone out with Uncle Charlie when he was lobstering full-time, or passed a foggy morning by his little stove, helping him to mend his gear.
Actually their great-uncle, Charlie Blake had long been their favorite relative. It was from him that David had learned most of what he knew about lobstering. And it was Uncle Charlie who had given David the dory that he had reconditioned into the Lobster Boy.
The old man unlocked the door and they entered the sun-pierced gloom of the shed. David sniffed curiously at the smell of fresh paint in the air.
“You handling all the gear you can?” yelled Uncle Charlie.
“Not exactly,” David admitted. “But I can’t line up any more this season.”
“Well, son,” chuckled Uncle Charlie, “you’ve got ’em lined up now, fifteen of ’em. Fresh-painted, too.” There along the top of Uncle Charlie’s bench was a neat row of main buoys — old, but solid and sun-dried. Each had a new coat of red-and-black paint underneath its green tip — David’s colors. And each was marked with David’s number and his initials.
Speechless, the boy looked at Uncle Charlie whose lean face shone with pleasure.
“Shucks. They’s no point in letting this gear just loaf around. You can set these any time you’ve a mind to. Traps outside to go with ’em.”
“Thanks, Uncle Charlie!”
