"Mrs. Miller, can’t I take Ned fishing?” asked Tom, through the open door.

He and Ned and Bob were sitting on the front porch. It was two weeks after the shooting accident, and Ned, aside from the arm still carried, for safety, in a sling, was apparently as hale as ever. Never a day passed that Tom was not in to see him at least once, and often more frequently, and visits from Hal and other friends swelled the calling list.

Ned had told so many times just “how it felt” to be shot, that now it was an old story, and he was getting tired of being the fashion.

“Why——I hardly think it would be wise, Tom,” responded Mrs. Miller, from within.

“But fishing’ll soon be over—that is, the best of it,” pressed Tom. “Perch are running thick as flies, so you can catch them as fast as you can throw in and pull out. Hen Swiggert brought home a hundred and four yesterday, and he was gone just part of a day. It’s too bad Ned has got to miss the fun.”

“’Twouldn’t hurt me a bit, mother,” urged Ned. “’Twould do me good.”

“I think you ought to keep quiet,” declared his mother.

“He can be just as quiet as he is here,” argued Tom. “We’ll go over on Eagle. I’ll row him, and we’ll get up in Catfish Slough, and all he’ll need do will be sit in the shade and fish. He can fish with one hand, easy.”

“Of course I can,” agreed Ned.

“Well, we’ll see what the doctor says about it,” promised Mrs. Miller; and that was the best word that the boys could squeeze out of her.

The doctor said: “Go ahead, but don’t get heated.”

“Isn’t he a dandy doctor, though!” exclaimed Ned, reporting to Tom.

“When I’m sick he’s the doctor I want! I’ll tell my mother so,” answered Tom. “When a fellow’s ready to go out he doesn’t keep him in!”

The boys had planned to use the scull-boat; but unluckily it turned out that Hal wanted the craft upon the same day as they, and Ned said, “All right.”

“I should think Hal could let you have the boat, considering you’re hurt,” hinted Tom. “Why can’t he?”

“He and Orrie Lukes are going up the river and stay all night,” explained Ned; “and they haven’t any other boat they can sleep in very well. The scull-boat’s dandy for sleeping in because it hasn’t any seats.”

Which was true.

“We can hire a skiff from Commodore Jones, I suppose, then,” said Tom, but in a tone not wholly satisfied.

“I suppose we’ll have to,” replied Ned. “We’ll get the No. 19—she pulls the easiest of any. But I’d rather have the scull-boat.”

“I tell you what!” exclaimed Tom, struck with an idea which had popped into his brain. “We’ll get a boat down at the Paper-mill Slough and then all we’ll have to do will be to row across.”

“Whose boat?” queried Ned.

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Tom. “Anybody’s’ll do. There are always a lot of skiffs tied along shore there—old leaky things, but good enough for us to fool with.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing, would it?” asked Ned, anxiously.

“No; I wouldn’t call that ‘stealing,’” asserted Tom. “Some of them don’t belong to anybody, ’special. They’re just used by the South Beaufort fellows to monkey in, and aren’t even locked. Nobody’ll care a bit if we take one for a day, and bring it back. It’ll save us a big row up against the current, too.”

“Save you, you mean,” corrected Ned. “I can’t row, except with one hand.”

“You shan’t row a stroke!” decided Tom, alarmed lest Ned might be going to try. “I’m running this shooting-match!” Then he added, doubtfully: “Zu-zu wants to go.”

“Let’s take her,” urged Ned. “Of course! She wouldn’t be in the way a bit.”

“Girls are a kind of bother, usually, out fishing, but Zu-zu’s different from most of them,” said Tom, highly pleased.

“Zu-zu’s got sense. She doesn’t just stand round and squeal,” observed Ned, sagely.

“That’s right. I’ll say it, if she is my sister,” agreed Tom.

Half-past five o’clock Saturday morning found the four of them—Ned and Tom and Zu-zu and Bob—at the Paper-mill Slough. Ned had under his sound arm his and Tom’s jointed rods, while Zu-zu proudly bore a slender little pole purchased for her by Tom, on the previous evening. Tom was in charge of a basket of lunch.

This basket vexed Zu-zu, who would have preferred that each one carry a few slices of bread and butter and sugar done up in a paper bag, just as the boys did when they went alone. But her mother had insisted upon the basket, with lunch in it for three. Ned was to furnish nothing; he was guest of honor.

Bob carried himself.

The morning was ideal—dewy and balmy and clear. Zu-zu, who rarely had been up so early before, and who looked on this outing as the greatest event of her life, was in the seventh heaven of delight over everything; even Bob could not keep back a few yelps; but Ned and Tom, as befitted old hunters and fishers, used to all hours and to all sights, were very matter-of-fact and stoical.

Indeed, Ned had thought it quite out of keeping with his dignity to have his mother arise before him, and hover over him while he ate his early breakfast, to make sure that he was well provided for and that his shoulder was not troubling him!

The sun was half an hour high, and, peeping over the trees of Eagle, opposite, was shining across the smooth waterway. Fish were jumping, birds were twittering, and the air was deliciously fresh.

With their noses resting upon the shore, and the little ripples lapping against their sides, just below the paper-mill there were, as Tom had predicted, quite a number of skiffs, of various shapes and in various stages of ruin. But, contrary to that which he had predicted, all seemed to be padlocked, with chains, to rings and staples.

“That’s a pretty idea!” grumbled Tom, prying along the line. “You’d think the old shebangs were worth something!”

“Isn’t it almost stealing, Ned?” inquired Zu-zu. “Tom says it isn’t.”

“N-no,” replied Ned, weighing the pros and cons of the matter. “You see, if we find a boat that’s unlocked it’s a pretty sure sign that either it hasn’t an owner, or else the owner doesn’t care if people borrow it. We’re just going across the slough in it.”

Zu-zu accepted the decision as final; Tom and Ned ought to know. She looked on anxiously as Tom examined the various fastenings. What if the trip had to be given up!

Bob sat down near Ned, and whined. He wondered why this fussing and delay. It was only a short swim.

“Hurrah—here’s one that’s only tied,” announced Tom.

“Goodie!” exclaimed Zu-zu, jumping up and down.

Ned heaved a sigh of relief, and Bob pricked up his ears.

“Come on, Zu-zu,” said Ned, descending to the boat, at the bows of which Tom was fumbling.

The boat proved to be the worst of the lot. It was a clumsy-looking, flat-bottomed affair, with square ends, and unpainted.

“What are you going to row with?” asked Zu-zu, stopping short.

Ned stared at Tom, and Tom stared at Ned. Somehow, oars had not occurred to them, although had they thought, they would have known that whatever the boat, the oars would not be left in it.

“I’ll paddle with a board,” declared Tom. “You get in while I’m hunting one.”

“Sit in the other end, Zu-zu,” bade Ned, holding out his hand to help her as she sprang from seat to seat. Bob was less polite. He rushed rudely past her, as if afraid of being left, and planted himself in the stern.

“Bob! Shame on you,” reproved Ned. “Don’t you know that the rule is ‘ladies first’?”

“But that’s meant for men, not dogs, isn’t it, Bob?” comforted Zu-zu, perching herself beside him, and sitting on her feet to keep them out of the water that swished about in the leaky craft.

Tom, with a piece of board in his hands, hurried back, and when Ned had securely squatted upon a seat in the middle, with a lusty heave he slowly started the heavy boat from its mooring-place, and tumbled in.

He stood up, and with a long, sweeping motion paddled first on the one side and then on the other. The craft, with its load, gradually crept toward the shore of Eagle, a stone’s throw away. Zu-zu, fixed in the spot assigned her, longed to trail her hand in the water, but refrained. She did not dare so much as move, lest she should become a “bother.”

Under Tom’s efforts they floated into the narrow mouth of a little bayou, called Catfish Slough, which wound through the island and emptied into Beaver Lake, in the centre of the island.

“Gracious, but this is hard work!” spoke Tom, after they had run aground several times in rounding corners. “The old thing won’t answer her helm.”

“Poor Tom,” cooed Zu-zu.

“Let’s get out and walk,” proposed Ned. “It’ll be quicker, and easier, too.”

Bob already was walking—or, rather, scampering. According to his custom, as the boat approached the land he had deserted.

“Let’s,” chimed in Zu-zu.

Tom swung the unwieldly craft in broadside against the bank, where trees and bushes came clear to the water’s edge, and all disembarked—although by different methods. That is, Zu-zu skipped out, Ned leaped out, and Tom merely stepped out, so that he could stoop and tie the chain painter to a root. Bob was present to welcome them.

“There!” Tom said. “We’ve got here, anyway.”

“Nobody’ll take it, I guess,” remarked Ned.

“Not if they have to row it,” asserted Tom.

“It’s the Black Swan!” cried Zu-zu, gazing back upon it. “See? It has the name on the—the—well, I don’t know whether you say stern or bow, but it’s right under where I was sitting.”

“Huh! Black Swan!” commented Tom, in scorn. “They ought to name it Mud Turtle.”

“You ought not to complain, Tom,” lectured Zu-zu. “You might have had no boat at all.”

Then she suddenly closed her lips, and grew red, for fear lest she might have said too much.

But Ned and Tom only laughed good-naturedly.

They walked ahead for a short distance, following a path along the little bayou, until they came upon a place where the bank was rather high, and the water before it was unusually wide and deep.

“This will do, won’t it?” spoke Ned, who was in advance, halting.

“I guess so,” replied Tom, also halting.

Zu-zu said nothing; she had faith in the two boys. Bob dashed up and pausing an instant to catch the drift of things, dashed off again. When he was in the woods he was always very, very busy.

The bothersome basket, which nevertheless was soon to make itself exceedingly agreeable, was dropped at the foot of a tree; the boys fitted together the joints of their rods, and Ned baited Zu-zu’s hook for her, that she might be first to throw in. Although he was limited to one arm, he could use the fingers of both hands.

Presently Zu-zu was staring at her cork, bobbing upon the ripples.

“Oh, it’s under—it’s under!” she cried. “What shall I do?”

“Pull it out, quick!” commanded Tom.

Thereupon Zu-zu gave a tremendous jerk, twitching high into the air an astonished perch, which fell back with a splash. The empty hook landed among the bushes far behind.

“Oh, dear! It got away!” complained Zu-zu.

“You mustn’t jerk so hard, Zu-zu,” advised Ned. “Watch how we do it.”

At that instant his bobber, too, wavered, and ducked, and he cleverly lifted to land a fat yellow perch.

“I’ve got one, too!” exclaimed Tom.

“Hurrah!” laughed Ned, joyfully. “They’re biting fine, aren’t they?”

“Poor things—just see how they flop,” said Zu-zu, watching Ned string his spoil. “Do you suppose it hurts them so very much?”

“I don’t believe fish feel as much as we do, or they wouldn’t have been made to be caught,” replied Ned.

“Well, please don’t handle them any rougher than you can help,” begged Zu-zu; and plunged in thought, she freed her line from the bushes, and dropped it in the water again.

Nothing more happened to her cork, and after guarding it for some time, while her companions were pulling out fish right along, she hopped up, and saying: “I shan’t fish any more; I’m going to find Bob and look for flowers,” she tripped back into the woods.

Ned lifted her hook and glanced at it.

“Why, your hook isn’t baited!” he called after her. “No wonder you didn’t catch anything.”

“I don’t care,” answered Zu-zu. “I hate to see them flop so.”

Ned baited it and let it down again.

“We’ll give you all that are caught on it, anyway,” he said.

Each of the boys was fishing with three hooks on a line; and the perch bit so boldly that often three were hauled out at a time, with others chasing them clear to the surface, trying to take the worm from their mouths.

Sometimes a round sunfish elbowed a perch out of the road, and grabbed the bait, only to meet a sudden fate.

Zu-zu’s pole and hook and line, attended to now by Tom and now by Ned, added to the general collection—and very nearly did more!

“Tom! Grab Zu’s pole—quick! I can’t!” warned Ned, abruptly, himself engaged in safely landing two large perch.

It was high time, indeed, that somebody came to the rescue, for behold, Zu-zu’s cork was completely out of sight, and her pole, pulled by an invisible force, was sliding into the water!

“It’s a pickerel—it’s a big pickerel!” cried Tom. “I saw his tail!”

He sprang for the pole—and at the very moment, with a bound and a splash, that blundersome Bob bolted into the water, from the other side, and made for their spot, laying a course that would cut exactly across Zu-zu’s line.

“Go back, Bob! Bob, go back!” ordered Ned, furiously.

But Bob swerved not. He merely flirted the water out of his ears, as if to say: “I don’t hear you,” and ploughed on, barking his defiance.

Mr. Pickerel took alarm. Any fish might, with Bob’s legs, working like the flappers of an immense turtle, bearing down upon him. He darted for cover. The line grew taut—and then relaxed, limp and lifeless, while the thrill all went out of the pole in Tom’s eager hands.

“He broke the hook!” mourned Tom, hauling in.

“Oh, Bob!” accused Ned.

Bob clambered up, shook himself, and hied into the woods once more. The bayou was free for all, and he saw no reason why he should not swim in it. He certainly had to cross, some way.

“He was longer than my arm!” asserted Tom, grieved, and gazing with regretful eyes at the worthless shank dangling where the pickerel ought to have been.

“Shucks!” muttered Ned; and his tone held a world of vexation and disappointment.

Zu-zu came upon the scene. She heard the sad tale without being in the least vexed.

“I don’t care a bit,” she said. “I’m glad the fish got away. He didn’t want to die, I’m sure. And we have lots of other fish, you know.”

It was plain to the boys that Zu-zu, being a girl, could not understand what a truly great loss had been suffered. So they did not argue the case.

As suddenly as they had commenced, the perch stopped biting. The corks lay idly upon the surface. The sun was high o’erhead. The dragon-flies shot here and there over the water, and the gnats buzzed around the fishermen’s ears, and the ears of Mistress Zu-zu.

“Let’s eat,” suggested Tom.

“Yes, let’s eat,” wagged Bob, appearing as if by magic.

The rest of the company being of the same mind, the napkiny depths of the basket were laid bare—and the way that basket heaped coals of fire upon the heads of those who had despised it was a caution!

Fish bit only slowly during the remainder of the day. One might have thought that they had worn themselves out with their greedy efforts of the early morning. Zu-zu and the two boys idled in the shade on the turf, and Bob, tireless, roamed east, west, north and south. If the island, formerly his home, recalled any memories to his doggish mind, he showed no will to sit and dream over them.

The shadows of the trees were long and pointed, bridging the bayou, when the boys drew in the lines, and unjointed the poles, and counted their fish.

“How many?” asked Ned.

“Fifty-three,” proclaimed Tom. “How many you got?”

“Forty-two,” answered Ned. “You beat me.”

“But you had only one arm,” reminded Tom.

“Let’s see—fifty-three plus forty-two—that makes ninety-five; and then there’s the big fish that got away, which makes ninety-six!” exclaimed Zu-zu. “My, what a lot! You ought to put some of them back.”

“We’ve put the big pickerel back; that’s all we can spare,” asserted Tom, ruefully.

They retraced their steps of the morning, along the path, until——

“Say—where’s our boat?” cried Ned, astounded.

They had arrived at the spot where they had left the Black Swan, but the craft had disappeared.

“Certain this is the place?” asked Tom. “Yes, it must be,” he continued. “There’s the root I tied to.”

“Somebody came along and helped himself, that’s all there is to it,” declared Ned.

“Maybe it just floated off,” guessed Zu-zu.

“No, it couldn’t; or else it would have come our way, with the current, you know, Zu-zu,” corrected Tom. “I call that a downright mean trick, to take our boat like this.”

“But we did the very same thing, ourselves. The boat wasn’t ours in the first place,” retorted Zu-zu, daringly.

“Well, the only thing to do is to follow on up the slough, and if we don’t come across the boat we’ll have to wait for somebody to take us over to the paper-mill,” spoke Ned.

They followed Catfish until they reached its head, where it branched off from Paper-mill Slough. They caught not a glimpse of the Black Swan. As they reached the shore the Beaufort whistles were blowing six o’clock. The sun was slipping behind a heavy bank of clouds, and dusk was at hand. The three could not make out a single person anywhere near them, to succor them, and standing there upon the muddy strand, with darkness closing in, and with nothing to eat and no place to sleep, they felt like forlorn, shipwrecked sailors.

Bob, however, curled himself in a ball, and went into a shivery doze.

“Here come some people,” announced Tom.

Through the mist now rising out of the water a boat approached from the town side of the slough. It carried a dozen Eagle Islanders who worked at the sawmills, and were returning home for the night.

“I’ll go and ask them to take us over,” volunteered Tom.

“No, I’ll go,” cried Ned. “They’ll listen quicker to a fellow with one arm.”

The islanders landed some distance above the little party, and tumbled out so quickly that by the time Ned had arrived all but one had trudged into the woods. This one was bending over, fastening the boat.

“Hello,” hailed Ned. “Can’t you please take us over the slough? We’ve lost our boat.”

But the man only grunted, and shook his head; and picking up his dinner bucket and coat, and the oars, stolidly tramped away.

Ned, indignant, examined the boat’s chain, with the hot idea of using the craft, anyway; but he found that it was padlocked.

He went back to his companions, who had been eagerly watching, and reported.

“Oh, dear, what shall we do?” wailed Zu-zu, beginning to be dismal from the mist and the shadows, and the suspicion that everybody but them was going to supper.

“We’ll yell like everything, and attract some one’s attention on the other side,” proposed Ned.

“I’d swim and get a boat, if the water wasn’t so cold,” said Tom.

“Don’t try, Tom. You’d get a cramp,” begged Zu-zu.

The boys shouted, and Zu-zu screamed, and all waved their handkerchiefs, while Bob raised his head in astonishment. Presently Tom panted:

“Somebody’s putting out in a boat, all right enough. Keep it up.”

From the mainland opposite, where lights were beginning to twinkle, a boat, barely seen against the dark shore-line, was starting out into the slough. They heard the rattle of the oars dropping into the oar-locks.

“Keep yelling,” gasped Ned.

And they did, until it was plain that the boat was making for them.

“It’s the Black Swan!” whispered Zu-zu, excitedly, as the craft neared.

“Oh, no,” scoffed Tom.

“But it is, it is!” insisted Zu-zu. “I know it is!”

And as it glided up through the muddy shallows at their feet they saw that the Black Swan it was. The rower stood up, and turned to face them. He was Big Mike!

Bob growled.

“Want to go across?” asked Big Mike, with a grin.

“Yes—that is, we’ve lost our boat,” stammered Ned, awkwardly.

“Get in; I’ll take you,” offered the South Beauforter.

“Will you? Good for you!” exclaimed Ned.

“I should say so!” spoke Tom.

Zu-zu was too flabber-gasted by the sudden presence of this arch ogre to say a word.

They marched in. Bob followed, with a dash to get past his enemy in safety.

“Was it you folks that took this boat? I found her up Catfish a little ways,” queried Big Mike, pushing off.

“Well—yes. You see, it was unlocked, and we didn’t know it belonged to anybody especial, and we wanted to get across,” explained Ned.

“It didn’t make no difference,” said Big Mike. “If I’d knowed who had it I wouldn’t have cared. Only, I thought some of them Dutch on the island had got it. They’re all the time doin’ that.”

“Let me row,” urged Tom.

“Naw; she rows easy after she gets started,” grunted Big Mike.

“It’s an awful nice boat. Did you name it?” piped Zu-zu, timidly, hoping to please their dreadful host. Who knows—he might be planning to dump them in the slough, and drown them!

Big Mike wriggled uneasily, evidently flattered.

“Naw; she was named before I got her,” he answered. “She ain’t very pretty, but she’s good enough for ’round here.”

“How’s your shoulder?” he asked, gruffly, of Ned.

“It’s about well. It wasn’t much, anyway,” responded Ned.

They were half-way across, and the rest of the distance was covered in silence, save when once Big Mike remarked again gruffly: “Perch runnin’ thick, ain’t they?” to which both boys assented.

“We’re much obliged, Mike,” spoke Ned, as they rose to step out. “Aren’t we, Tom?”

“Yes, sir-ee!” exclaimed Tom.

“Oh, ’twasn’t nothin’,” growled Big Mike, tying the boat. “I jest heared somebody yellin’, an’ thought I’d go over an’ get ’em. I seen there was a girl, and a feller with one arm done up.”

Ned whispered to Tom, and Tom nodded, and with a gesture passed a string of fish to Zu-zu.

“Here,” said Zu-zu, holding out the string to Big Mike.

“I don’t want ’em,” declared Big Mike, straightening after his task.

“But we ought to pay you for the use of the boat,” said Zu-zu. “And for coming after us, too; and we’ve got more fish than we can eat. There—you’ll have to take them,” and she dropped them in a scaly heap at his feet. Then the three of them hastened up the bank, with Bob, glad to be free from the presence of his foe, frisking ahead. Looking back, they saw Big Mike slowly lift the fish, and, shouldering his oars, start off, no doubt homeward.

“Big Mike’s not so bad, after all; is he?” asserted Zu-zu.

“No,” agreed Tom and Ned.

Bob did not join in this opinion. Nothing that Big Mike would do could make up, in the mind of Bob, for past offenses.