_The Three Musketeers_ gathered dust on the wooden shelf. Percy had
faced squarely the fact of his college conditions, and had determined
that they must be made up at the opening of the fall term; so his spare
time went into Virgil and Caesar and algebra and geometry, instead of
being spent on Dumas. He rarely asked for assistance from the others;
they had little leisure, and it was his own fight. He buckled down
manfully.
Another task that he set before himself was the establishment of cordial
relations with the other members of the party. He realized that his own
fault had made this necessary. It had been an easy matter to get on good
terms with Jim, Budge, and Throppy. With Filippo it was a little harder;
but soon he, too, thawed out when he found that Percy treated him
courteously and was willing to do his share of the camp work. Even Nemo
wagged his tail when Percy appeared, and the crow grew tame enough to
eat fish out of his hand.
One afternoon, when the fog had lifted sufficiently to make it possible
to see a few hundred feet from the island, a motor-boat unexpectedly
appeared from the north and swung round Brimstone Point into the cove.
She ran up alongside the _Barracouta_, where the boys were baiting their
trawl.
"I'm the warden," said one of the two newcomers, a gray-mustached,
keen-eyed man. "I've come to look over your car."
Jim took his dip-net and stepped into the motor-boat, and they ran up to
the lobster-car. A few minutes' investigation of its contents satisfied
the official that it contained no "shorts."
"Glad to be able to give you a clean bill of health," said he as he set
Jim back on board the sloop. "I wish some other people I know of did
business as clean and aboveboard as you young fellows."
A quarter-hour later the sound of his exhaust had died away in the fog
to the northward.
"What would he have done if he'd found any 'shorts'?" asked Percy.
"Fined us a dollar for every one," answered Jim. "Taken the cream off
the summer, wouldn't it? Sometimes it pays, even in dollars and cents,
to be honest."
The next morning was hot and muggy. The sea about the island was clear
of fog for one or two miles. Jim and Budge had started long before light
to set the trawl, and Throppy wished to make some changes on his
wireless; so Filippo was glad enough of the chance to go out with Percy
to haul the lobster-traps.
The little Italian had lost much of his melancholy. He enjoyed his work
and the good-fellowship of the camp. The weeks of association with his
new friends had made of him an entirely different fellow from the
lonely, homesick lad they had picked up on the steamboat wharf at
Stonington.
The two boys started in the pea-pod at six o'clock. A glassy calm
overspread the sea. Even the perpetual ocean swell seemed to have lost
much of its force.
"I'll row!" volunteered Percy.
He stripped off his oil-coat and sweater and rolled up his
shirt-sleeves.
"It'll be hot up in the granite quarries to-day, hey, Filippo? S'pose
you're sorry not to be there?"
"_Io sono contento_" ("I am satisfied"), replied the Italian.
Hauling and rebaiting the hundred-odd traps was a good five hours' job
and more for the couple, neither of whom had ever handled a small boat
or seen a live lobster before the previous month. As the forenoon
advanced the air seemed to grow thicker and more breathless. Over the
water brooded a languid haze, through which the sun rays burned with a
moist, intense heat.
Percy's bare arms began to grow red and painful.
"Feel as if they were being scalded," he complained. "I've heard Jim say
a fog-burn was worse than any other kind. Now I know he's right."
Eleven o'clock, and still twenty-five traps to be pulled. Most of these
were on the Dog and Pups, a group of ledges more than a mile northeast
of the island. It was the best spot for lobsters anywhere about
Tarpaulin. Percy hesitated.
"Fog seems to be closing in a little," he observed, "and we haven't any
compass. Should hate to get out there and have it shut down thick.
Might be hard work to find the island again."
He glanced at the tub of lobsters.
"If the Dog and Pups keep up anywhere near their average, we'll beat the
record. What d'you say, Filippo? Shall we take a chance and surprise the
rest of 'em?"
Filippo flashed his white teeth.
"I go with you," he smiled.
"Then go it is!" decided Percy.
He headed the pea-pod for the Dog and Pups.
"We'll keep a sharp lookout, and if it starts to grow anyways thick
we'll strike back for old Tarpaulin."
A pull of about twenty minutes brought them to the ledges, around which
the traps were set in a circle. They began hauling at the point in the
circumference nearest to the island, following the buoys west and north.
The catch exceeded their hopes.
"We'll need another tub, if this keeps up," chuckled Percy.
Filippo laughed jubilantly. The fog was forgotten. Their entire
attention was centered on the contents of each trap as it was pulled.
Round on the edge of the circle farthest from the island a pot refused
to leave bottom. Percy tugged till he was red in the face, but he could
not start it.
"Catch hold with me, Filippo!" he puffed.
The Italian joined his strength to Percy's, but to no avail. The slacker
still clung to the bottom. The boys straightened up, panting.
"We'll have to leave it," acknowledged Percy, disappointedly. "Probably
there's half a dozen two-pound lobsters in it."
He looked about and gave a startled cry.
"Where's the island?"
The wooded bluffs of Tarpaulin had disappeared. While they had been
wrestling with the stubborn trap the fog had stolen a march on them. On
all sides loomed a horizon of gray mist, not a half-mile distant and
steadily drawing nearer. They must locate the island and get back to it
at once.
Percy tossed over the buoy and the warp at which they had been pulling.
Tarpaulin lay southwest; but which way was southwest? Busied with the
trap, he had utterly lost all sense of direction. The sun? He glanced
hopefully up. No; that would not help any. The fog was too dense. Ha!
The surf?
"Listen hard, Filippo!" he exhorted.
They strained their ears. No sound. The swell was so gentle that it did
not break on the ledges of the island loudly enough to be heard a mile
and a quarter off. The heaving circle of which they were the center was
contracting fast. Its misty walls were now less than five hundred feet
away.
"Guess we'd better take a buoy aboard, and hang to it till Jim comes out
to hunt us up. It'd make me feel cheap to do it, but it's the only safe
way. But wait! What's that?"
Both listened again. A sound reached their ears, plain and unmistakable,
the rote of dashing water.
"There's the surf!" rejoiced Percy. "Don't you hear it?"
"_Si_, I hear it," answered Filippo.
Dropping the buoy he had just gaffed, Percy took the oars and began
rowing hard toward the sound, which gradually grew louder. The fog came
on with a rush, sliding over them like an avalanche. It was hardly
possible to see beyond the tips of the oar-blades.
"Lucky we can hear that surf!" said Percy, comfortably. "But strange it
sounds so loud and so near."
Now it was close ahead. He stopped rowing, puzzled. A blast of cold air
smote them. Suddenly there was a rushing all around. It was not the surf
at all, but waves, breaking before the coming wind. They were lost in
the fog!
Percy faced Filippo blankly. For a moment his head went round. With
bitter regret he now realized that in dropping the buoy he had given up
a certainty for an uncertainty that might cost them dearly. But nothing
was to be gained by yielding to discouragement. He reviewed his scanty
stock of sea lore.
"That wind is probably blowing from some point between northeast and
southeast. If we turn around, and run straight before it, we'll be
likely to hit the island."
He swung the pea-pod stern to the breeze.
"Here goes! Watch out sharp for lobster-buoys, Filippo!"
But no buoys appeared. They might pass within ten feet of one and never
see it. Five, ten, twenty, thirty minutes passed; and still no sign of
Tarpaulin. The wind was becoming stronger, the waves higher; their
rushing was now loud enough to drown the sound of any surf that might be
breaking on the ledges of the island. Percy rowed for a quarter-hour
longer, dread plucking at his heart-strings. At last he rested on his
oars.
"We've missed it," he acknowledged, despondently.
They were lost now in good earnest. It was one o'clock. The fog hung
over them like a heavy gray pall, so damp and thick that it was almost
stifling. Percy turned the pea-pod bow to the wind and began rowing
again.
"We must try to hold our own till it clears up," he observed, with
attempted cheerfulness.
But his tones lacked conviction. It might not clear for two or three
days. By degrees his strokes lost their force, until the oars were
barely dipping. The boat was going astern fast.
Two o'clock. Long ere this Jim and Budge must have returned from
trawling and realized that the pea-pod and its occupants were lost. They
were probably searching for them now, perhaps miles away on the other
side of the island, wherever it might be.
A gruff bark startled them. A round, black, whiskered head suddenly
thrust up out of the water close to the port gunwale. Filippo cried out
in alarm, but Percy reassured him.
"Only a seal!"
Abruptly the sea grew rough. All around them tossed and streamed and
writhed long, black aprons of kelp. They were passing over a sunken
ledge. Soon it lay behind them; the kelp vanished and the waves grew
lower.
Three o'clock went by; then four. The afternoon was waning. The thick,
woolly gray that surrounded them assumed a more somber shade. Night was
coming, pitchy and starless, doubly so for the two lost boys, adrift on
the open ocean.
Hark! What was that? They both heard it, far distant, off the port bow!
Percy leaped up in excitement.
"The shot-gun!" he cried. "They're signaling!"
Heading the boat toward the sound, he rowed his hardest, while Filippo
strained forward, listening. Ten minutes dragged by, and once
again--_pouf!_--slightly louder, and slightly to starboard. Percy
corrected his course and again threw his whole heart into his rowing.
So it went for an hour, the signals sounding at ten-minute intervals,
each louder and nearer than the one before. At last Percy thought it
possible that their voices might be heard against the wind. He stopped
rowing.
"Now shout, Filippo!"
Their cries pealed out together. They were heard. An answering hail came
back. Soon the puff-puff-puff of the _Barracouta's_ exhaust was driving
rivets through the fog. A little later they were on board the sloop,
answering the inquiries of Jim and Budge, while the empty pea-pod towed
astern.
"Your seamanship wasn't bad, Perce," was Jim's judgment. "After you
dropped the buoy, and then found you'd been rowing into the teeth of the
wind, it might have been better to have tried only to hold your own
until we came out to look you up. That breeze at first was nearer north
than northeast, and when you ran before it you went south past the
island. After that you were all at sea. But I might have done just the
same thing. I can't tell you, though, how glad we are to see you back,
even if it did cost next to our last shell of birdshot. The Gulf of
Maine's a pretty homesick place to be kicking round in on a foggy
night."
"You aren't any gladder than we are," replied Percy.
He glanced at the pea-pod towing astern.
"But say, Jim! Just cast your eye over that tub. When it comes to
catching lobsters, haven't Filippo and I got the rest of the bunch beat
to a frazzle?"