At one o'clock the four academy boys rowed out to the _Barracouta_. All but Percy had on their oilskin aprons, or "petticoats."
"Where's your regimentals, Whittington?" asked Lane.
"I'm only going to look on this afternoon," replied Percy.
The other three exchanged surprised glances, but made no comments. On board the sloop Jim was soon busily engaged in demonstrating the process of dressing fish. Budge and Throppy learned quickly. Percy's refusal to take part in the work did not prevent him from watching it with interest from the cabin roof.
The fish were split and cleaned. Their heads were cut off and thrown into a barrel, to serve later as lobster bait, and the livers tossed into pails. Their "sounds," the membrane running along the backbone, were removed and placed in a box. After the bodies had been rinsed in a tub of water, and the backbones cut out, they were flung into the dory, taken ashore and plunged into another tub of water, and then salted down in hogsheads. Three pairs of hands made speedy work.
Percy pointed to the pails containing the livers.
"Leave 'em in a barrel in the sun to be tried out," responded Jim. "The oil is worth more than sixty cents a gallon."
"Cut 'em open with a pair of shears, press out the blood, and spread 'em on wire netting to dry for three days; then sew 'em up in sacks, to be shipped to some glue-factory. Four pounds of 'em'll bring a dollar. These things and some others are the by-products of the fishing business. They're worth too much to throw away."
Percy's eye dwelt on the knives and aprons of his three associates.
"I'm glad I don't have to fish for a living," he said.
Percy slept soundly that night. To be sure, the alarm routed out the Spurlingites at the unseemly hour of four, but that was far better than twelve. After breakfast he enjoyed a cigarette on the beach while the others were helping Filippo clear away. It was a calm, beautiful morning, and as young Whittington gazed over the smooth, blue sea he felt that even a fisherman's life might have its redeeming features.
At six they all started to make the round of the lobster-traps, on the _Barracouta_. The first string of white buoys, striped with green, was encountered off Brimstone Point.