Woodcraft Boys at Sunset Island

Woodcraft Boys at Sunset Island

BY LILLIAN ELIZABETH ROY AND M. F. HOISINGTON

ILLUSTRATED

GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ILLUSTRATIONS

WOODCRAFT BOYS AT SUNSET ISLAND

WOODCRAFT BOYS AT SUNSET ISLAND

CHAPTER ONE THE SPORTS OF SUNSET ISLAND

“SAY! What’s that over there—there near the Cove? Look! There it is again—sticking its fin out of the water,” cried Billy Remington excitedly, as, toggle-iron in hand, he stood in the bow of the large rowboat manned by three other boys.

“Gee! S’pose it’s a shark?” exclaimed Paul Alvord, who, with Dudley West, was visiting Sunset Island, the Maine resort of the Remingtons’.

“Oo-oh! What if it is? Let’s row over and maybe we can have a try to harpoon it!” added Dudley, eagerly.

The “white-ash breeze” soon brought them near the spot where the fin had last been seen and Fred Remington, the oldest of the four boys, rested upon his oars while scanning the face of the water.

“Look—quick! There it is again!” shouted Billy.

14 “Let’s try and drive it in nearer shore if we can,” came from Fred, who was as eager as the other three lads to become better acquainted with the strange object.

Then began a breathless chase. Four highly excited young fishermen yelling at each other, or pulling madly at the oars when Fred so ordered, and cracking muscles to back water when the need demanded—as was the case whenever the queer hulk of a fish threatened to swim too near the boys’ boat.

However, the creature was already in too shallow water for its bulk to swim and it struggled valiantly, if futilely, to make its escape from the Nemesis in the boat.

“What a whopper!” cried Dudley, while Billy carefully rose from his seat with the harpoon held in his hands.

“Now! Now, give it to him!” called Fred.

Thus importuned, Billy tried his luck. The small harpoon which had been prepared for a chance fling at a porpoise, was let fly at the floundering mass. The aim was true but the iron rebounded as from an oaken plank.

With gasps of wonderment from the boys, the harpoon was hauled back and Billy anxiously tried again. But with the same result.

The huge fish was now seen with its back fin clear out of water in its maddened efforts to swim in the insufficient depth.

15 “What can it be?” asked Paul, curiously.

“I’m sure I don’t know—certainly not a shark,” replied Fred. Then turning to Billy, he added, “Here—let me have a try at it.”

Billy passed over the harpoon and the boys rowed the boat quite close to the greyish mass so that Fred distinctly saw a great eye.

“Steady boys—quiet now!” warned Fred, raising the weapon above his head.

The big fish lay temporarily resting when Fred launched the iron with all his strength. An accurate aim at the eye which he rightly judged might be vulnerable and the harpoon sunk in the target.

The consuming anxiety of the next few moments seemed like eternity to the boys as they wondered whether they could win out in the mad battle that began the very moment the harpoon struck in. The water was churned as if by a great paddle-wheel; the spray flew over everything while the fish whopped forward, then suddenly backed, then flung itself from side to side in an agonised and frenzied plunge for safety. The harpoon held good however, and Fred paid out about thirty fathoms of line before the victim became exhausted.

It succeeded in gaining deeper water in the frantic battle for life, and had not the iron held securely, the unwieldy fish would surely have broken away to its freedom in the sea.

“It really looks like a young whale, don’t you think16 so, Fred?” ventured Paul, after the fish had quieted somewhat.

“Nonsense! But it certainly is a queer bunch of hide and bones,” returned Fred.

It was impossible for the boys to handle their prize as it was so heavy, but they managed to drag the monster close to the stern of their boat and then tow it triumphantly in to Saturday Cove where lay a large schooner. The mate yelled at the boys and Fred looked up to find a group of men eagerly watching.

“Come alongside and we’ll haul him out fer you!” shouted the mate.

The boys obeyed and the mate ordered his crew to help. “Pass a bo’line ’round his tail and hoist ’im up!”

“Hit don’t seem to have no tail,” complained a sailor.

“Ner head, nuther—it’s all bulk!” laughed another. Fred passed the harpoon line aboard and the crew tailed on to it. But the combined efforts of the four husky sailors were insufficient to raise the still struggling creature clear of the water.

After a time, however, they managed to get a good view, so that the mate recognised it for a deep-sea sunfish, or mola. He then sent the sailors forward for the large hook used in catting the anchor. They hooked the throat-halliards into this and passed it down to Fred who tried to fasten the anchor-hook in the fish’s mouth. But the beak-like jaws were too small. Finally he managed to hook it into the mola’s17 eye alongside the harpoon. With this powerful tackle the sailors hoisted the fish out of water.

Visitors and fishermen in every imaginable sort of craft clustered about the yacht, all intent upon seeing the curiosity and securing a good snapshot of it. With the others, came the Captain of the power launch belonging to Sunset Island.

“Hey, boys! What a monster catch!” called Captain Ed.

“It sure is! How much do you reckon he weighs?” asked a man who overheard the Captain’s remark.

“Looks like half a ton to me—but there’s no tellin’ without scales handy,” returned the Captain.

“Hoh! We weighed him all right, Cap—by the scales on his back!” haw-hawed the mate of the schooner.

The joke was an old one with Maine fishermen and the mate resorted to it without thinking, so the Captain caught him up instantly.

“Naw, yuh didn’t nuther! Cuz he hain’t got no scales—see!”

The laugh that broke simultaneously from the crew was thoroughly enjoyed by every one, including the mate, for the mola had a very tough hide but was scaleless. Its apology for a tail was a frill of scallops opposite the beak-end, while the most prominent features were the dorsal and ventral fins, each one about a foot and a half in length.

“Whad’ye say ye th’ot he weighed, Cap?” asked18 the mate of Captain Ed as soon as the laugh died down.

“Nigh on half a ton, thinks I,” responded the Captain.

That started a new argument among the local fishermen “lying” in those parts about the weight of the fish. During the discussion, Fred managed to shove his boat close to the launch from Sunset Island. Then he hailed Captain Ed.

“Let’s tow the sunfish over home and give father and mother a chance to look at the queer thing.”

So, acting upon Fred’s suggestion, the Captain helped the sailors lower the mola into the water again and remove the yacht’s tackle. The procession started: first, Captain Ed, Billy and Dudley in the power boat, towing the rowboat with Fred and Paul in it. They in turn towed the sunfish, the latter at the end of the rope churning up the water as it careened after the boat.

While the four boys excitedly retailed the capture of their prize, the launch was making good speed across West Penobscot Bay to a group of three small islands lying near the fourteen-mile-long shore of Islesboro, which divides the bay into east and west. The boys’ summer camp was on the most northerly isle which contained about eight acres of land, high, rocky, and closely wooded with fir and spruce.

The middle island, called Isola Bella, was some twenty-four acres in extent and was also high and well19 wooded. It belonged to Mrs. Remington’s brother, William Farwell, always known as “Uncle Bill.”

The southerly one of the island trio was very appropriately named Flat Island because of its nature: Not a tree upon it and shaped like a skate with a sand-spit for a tail.

The three islands were about a quarter of a mile from each other and about two miles from the mainland where the boys had just caught the mola.

Great was the excitement at Sunset Island when the convoy was discerned through the spyglass. As soon as voices could be heard, and in fact before that time, the eager watchers sitting upon the rocks of Treasure Cove were eagerly shouting and waving hands to the approaching craft.

“What did you catch?”

“Is it a porpoise?”

“Where did you get it?”

Mr. Remington was the first to reach the boats and help the boys. “Well, I declare—a sunfish! Haven’t seen one in a long time. What are you going to do with it, now that you’ve got it?”

“To tell the truth, we never thought of that,” retorted Fred.

“All we wanted to do was to catch it, and get it over here to exhibit to you folks,” added Billy.

“I’ve hearn say that th’ hide makes mighty good insides for baseballs, ’count of the rubbery quality,”20 casually remarked the Captain, with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Isn’t it a good fish to eat?” questioned Paul.

“Nah! yuh might as well try to eat a meal off of auto tires and chopped kindlin’ wood served with fish-oil dressin’,” chuckled the Captain.

“Then let’s get Mose down here and fool him into believing he has to skin and cook the fish for chowder,” proposed Dudley, mischievously.

“So we will!” agreed the other boys, and Dudley ran up the bank to call Mose.

The brown chef soon appeared on the rocks in front of the bungalow to see what all the commotion was about and Billy called up to him:

“Bring down your tools to clean this fish, Mose!”

“We’re going to have it for to-night’s dinner ’cause Captain Ed says it won’t keep,” added Paul.

“You’ll have to slice off the big steaks first, Mose, and chop up the rest for the chowder,” concluded Fred.

Never doubting the sincerity of the orders given, Mose went back to find a huge pan and the butcher-knife. With his sleeves rolled up and a heavy burlap apron tied about his waist, he came prepared to clean the monster fish.

While every one stood about grinning, Mose started in to cut off the end where the beak grew; but saw as powerfully as he would, the knife made no impression on the tough hide.

21 “Ah d’clar’ t’ goodness, Mis Remin’ton, how you-all eber goin’ t’ chaw dis elerphant fish?” worried Mose, as he stood up to mop the moisture from his perspiring brow.

A shout of laughter from the circle of hoaxing islanders made Mose glance quizzically at them.

“Ha! that was one on you, Mose,” exclaimed Billy gleefully.

“Nem-mine, you Indians! Mose got all summer, yuh know, an’ Ah’m gwine git eben wid yuh yit!” prophesied the jolly cook, brandishing the fearful knife as he trudged away toward the bungalow, leaving the laughing crowd standing by the fish.

“We’ve got to keep it some way until Uncle Bill comes,” suggested Fred, looking about the cove for a possible place to anchor the mola.

“Why, when is Uncle Bill expected?” asked Elizabeth Remington, Fred’s fifteen-year-old sister.

“Not for ten days yet, and really, boys, it will be impossible for you to keep this curiosity near Sunset as long as that! You will have to tow it out for the tide to carry far, far away for more reasons than one, before your uncle arrives,” advised Mrs. Remington.

“Can’t we keep it here for a day or two, mother?” begged Billy.

“Not if the flies assemble for a picnic,” retorted she.

“It’s too bad Uncle Tom and Aunt Edith are not at Rosemary yet—he would just love to see this natural history thing. He’s always so enthusiastic about22 curiosities and all such sort of stuff,” added Elizabeth, gazing at the mola regretfully.

“Well that’s what they miss for not coming to Maine before the first of July,” declared Billy.

“I nearly missed it too, didn’t I?” said Paul, deeply grateful that he hadn’t. “If I’d waited as Hilda wanted me to, just to spend the Fourth with her, I wouldn’t have been here yet, would I?”

The others laughed at such evidence, and Paul added: “Well, I sure am glad I’m here!”

“So’m I,” declared Dudley. “And I’m goin’ to stay, too!”

Again every one laughed at the positiveness of the two young visitors who were Billy’s chums at school, and Paul turned to inquire of his hostess:

“How long do you s’pose we can stay here with you?”

“Just as long as you behave and are not much care or trouble. But it also depends somewhat on what your parents say,” replied the lady of the island.

“Oh, they won’t mind us stayin’ and we’ll do just everything you say, Miss Remington!” quickly promised Dudley.

“You just bet we will, an’ my mother and sister are real glad I can visit Billy all summer on such a dandy island,” assured Paul.

“Well then, the Sagamore of Sunset Isle has his work all cut out for him this summer,” laughed Mrs.23 Remington, nodding at Fred, who was seventeen and the oldest of all the children.

“Looks like some programme, too!” commented Fred.

“By the time the season is over, Fred will have had such fine training that he will have to go to Plattsburg for a rest. He will be able to pass high in the physical requirements, all right,” added Mr. Remington, who had joined the group in time to hear the latter part of the conversation.

As Mr. Remington finished speaking the bell rang for luncheon and a crowd of hungry islanders trooped in to eat every crumb of Mose’s delicious meal. Then, feeling like a new man once more, Fred announced his intention of sailing over to Isola Bella to bring his aunt and little cousins, Miriam and Betty, to Sunset Island to see the deep-sea curiosity.

In an hour’s time, therefore, Fred landed his passengers at the float stage, and hurried them over to the place where lay the giant sunfish.

“Oh, I wish Papa could see it!” cried Miriam Farwell, the eldest child of Aunt Miriam and Uncle Bill.

The energetic islanders finally wearied of admiring the mola and turned their attention to other things.

“I wish Uncle Bill would offer a prize for the biggest fish caught this summer—you know he did that last year,” said Billy, the financier of the family.

“That makes an incentive to catch something larger than your neighbour’s, it is true, but I wouldn’t scorn24 to land a big fish even if there were no prize given me,” said Fred.

“No one would be so foolish as that,” scoffed Paul.

“Captain, how about the trawl this summer?” asked Mr. Remington.

“Oh, yes—and the lobster pots, Captain Ed?” added Billy.

“Well, now, we kin overhaul the trawl and set the pots whenever you say,” replied the Captain.

“Then the sooner we start the better!” declared Dudley.

“Ef you ketch any lobsters I’ll be s’prised, all right. T’other fishermen ain’t ketchin’ nawthin’ this year,” said the Captain.

“It’s queer where all the lobsters have gone! They used to be so plentiful that we could easily catch a mess anywhere. Supplying the canneries doesn’t explain everything about the scarcity,” commented Mrs. Remington.

“I’ve noticed another thing that has changed too, since we first began coming to Maine years ago,” added Mr. Remington. “Do you remember how rarely kelp was found in this bay then? Now, all the ledges in the back bay are covered with it—the ledges that used to be covered with mussels and sea anemones.”

“That’s so, but I never thought of it before,” said Mrs. Remington thoughtfully, then adding, “The cod and other big fish are now being caught here in the25 bay whereas the fishermen used to go way down below Rockland for them.”

The others had been listening intently to these interesting remarks and Billy ventured a theory.

“Do you s’pose the kelp has anything to do with the big fish coming to our bay?”

“I’ve heard some of the natives wonder over the same thing. And the larger fish being in these waters might explain the disappearance of the lobsters as it is said that lobster-spawn floats in masses near the surface of the water at a certain period of its development that it may be benefited by the sun rays. Of course, the big fish eat millions of the eggs at one meal, thus eliminating just so many future lobsters,” explained Mr. Remington.

“It sure sounds reasonable, father,” added Fred.

“Still, that does not compensate us for the loss of our delicious broiled lobster,” argued Mrs. Remington.

“The sooner we fix up the traps, then, the sooner you can have a treat of lobster,” laughed her husband.

“Let’s begin right now and put them into working shape,” cried Billy.

“And I’ll act for Uncle Bill this time—I’ll offer a prize for the largest lobster caught this season,” announced his father.

“Oh good! there are just four traps and each one of us boys can bait and take charge of one,” decided Billy.

“And remember, boys, besides the prize, there is26 some form of Honour in Woodcraft for knowing fish,” reminded their mother.

“Sure enough—twenty-five kinds of fish for a coup!” responded Fred.

“And fifty for a Grand Coup,” added Elizabeth.

“Hoh, we can never win fifty!” declared Dudley.

“Why not—if a trawl rakes up a hundred different kinds, it’ll be easy,” bragged Paul.

Then Mrs. Remington said, “You know, boys, we will soon begin our weekly Councils and you ought to be able to get the low Honour for twenty-five fish without any difficulty. Dudley, how many do you know now?”

“Are lobsters fish?” countered Dudley.

“Why, of course they are a sort of fish,” quickly retorted Paul.

“It seems to me that the Woodcraft Manual says ‘vertebrates’ and that means ‘back-bones’; so lobsters should not be included,” explained Mrs. Remington.

“Anyway, I know a cunner, a sculpin, and a mackerel—that’s three. And a salmon, makes four, and a cod and a flounder, that’s six. Now, let me see—oh yes! a harbour-pollock, and, and—I know lots more too, but I can’t just remember,” admitted Dudley.

“Ha, ha! Dud, you ought to be named ‘Dub’! What about the very fish we caught to-day?” teased Fred.

“Gee, that’s so! I clean forgot the mola; guess it was too tiny to remember,” grinned Dudley.

27 “And the dogfish, and the skate, too, Dud,” reminded Billy.

“But I haven’t seen them yet—I’ve only known them by their names and the pictures.”

“Say, father, will you help us set the trawl so we can try for the coup? Just think of all the different kinds of fish we always get that way,” suggested Fred.

“All right, boys, any time you say,” agreed Mr. Remington, who was never so happy as when there was something doing.

Captain Ed, too, was most enthusiastic about the idea of a trawl, so the Sunset Islanders went to their tents that night to dream of hooks and fins and monsters of the deep, deep sea.

They all met at the breakfast table the next morning, and the talk waxed so interesting that the usual object of sole attention—the star-dish of the island, creamed beef and hashed fried potatoes with soft-boiled eggs on the side—was partaken of in an absent-minded manner.

Fred and Billy and their boy guests Paul and Dudley, were full of plans for baiting up the trawl by that afternoon. The girls, Elizabeth and Edith Remington were anxious to help also.

On the way from the bungalow after breakfast, Elizabeth explained to the boys. “We can fish all morning and catch enough bait for the lobster-traps and set the herring-net to get the bait for the trawl overnight.”

28 “How many hooks are on that trawl?” asked Paul.

“About five hundred,” replied Fred. “Each one is on a short line called a ‘gangin’ which is about a foot and a half long. These gangins hang down every five or so feet along the whole length of the trawl. They have the hooks at the ends and these we have to bait.”

“Gee! How long is the trawl if there are five hundred hooks?” wondered Dudley.

“About half a mile long,” returned Fred.