Again the three lapsed into silence while the Betsy Anne slipped away on a long port reach. Hood Island dropped behind rapidly, and off the starboard bow Jack and Ray could see a thin gray speck on the horizon which they concluded must be the mainland.
“How long does it take this craft of yours to make Austin’s Pool or wherever it is you are taking us?” demanded Jack of the skipper a little later when the Betsy Anne had come about and started on a starboard tack.
“Has soon’s any craft o’ ’er size kin make hit,” was the lobsterman’s ambiguous reply.
“Huh, that’s definite,” muttered the lad from Vermont.
“Well, then I shud say as ’ow she’d make hit soon enough for Warden Williams to lock two capital lobster piruts hup before supper,” added the fisherman.
“Jiminy,” said Jack, quite disturbed. “That means we won’t get back to Hood Island until long after dark, Ray, even if we can convince this warden fellow, whoever he is, that we are not lobster thieves.”
“’Ood Hisland,” exclaimed the lobsterman. “Ye ain’t expectin’ ever for t’ git back there again, are ’e? Why, that warden jest goes daft on lobster piruts like you. ’E’ll keep ’e in ’is lockup for a year or two, mebby three,” assured the lobsterman.
The thoughts of such a possibility really began to worry Jack. He knew perfectly well that he and Ray could convince any fair-minded person that they were not lobster pirates. In truth, if worse came to worse, they could send for Mr. Warner and some of their friends in the construction camp and in that way prove their innocence. But at best that would take a whole day and perhaps longer, and he had visions of spending time in some vile-smelling country jail until assistance arrived.
Such disturbing thoughts occupied them both for most of the afternoon. They conversed in undertones occasionally, but for the most part they were silent, thinking of their strange predicament and wondering what their friends back on Hood Island would think when they did not turn up at the sound of Bongo’s supper call that evening.
As the sun dropped lower in the western sky a stiffer breeze sprung up and the Betsy Anne redoubled her speed. Already she had approached so close to the mainland that Jack and Ray could hear the grumble of the surf that rolled in upon the rock-strewn beach, and it was not long after that when the little boat was headed into a big crescent-shaped bay about four miles across where the beach was broad and of the whitest sand. At one horn of the crescent was a little hamlet and innumerable docks, while far across on the other side was a long low sandy point which stretched out into the water and was capped with what appeared at a distance to be a number of dilapidated sheds. Jack learned later that this sandy cape was called Frenchman’s Point, and that the shanties he saw were the dwellings of a horde of French Canadians, half-breed Indians and other riffraff that lived on what they could find or steal along the beach.