The work of rope-yarn-making went steadily on day by day, the pile of the product of our labor growing by slow accretion, until it was a great heap. This was such very tedious work that you may be sure I kept up a steady thinking all the while how to lessen and lighten it. I thought of two schemes before long that would very materially diminish the amount of rope-yarn required. The first of these schemes to take form in my mind related to a substitute for the two great hawsers which we had thought would be required, one to go under the bow and one under the stern of the sunken galleon. I said nothing about this idea until it was fully matured in my mind. Then one day as I finished a half-hour’s grind, with the perspiration streaming from every pore and the breath about all gone from my body, I said:--
“Mr. Millward, what do you say to quitting for the day? It is now nearly noon. I feel as though I would like to go fishing.”
He looked at me a moment, and then replied, “I don’t wonder. I feel that way myself. If you are for a fishing excursion I am with you with all my heart. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’”
Immediately after dinner we overhauled the fish lines--real ones with genuine hooks this time, which belonged to Mr. Millward’s stores--and collecting a supply of whelks, clams, and shrimps for bait, were all ready for embarking by the time Alice came down to the boat. Just beyond the bar and the rollers we anchored the boat, and the sport very soon began by Mr. Millward pulling up a fine red-snapper, and continued until we had caught half a dozen fine fish. Then they ceased to bite for a long time, and the cause was made apparent by Miss Alice hauling up a three-foot spotted shark, which managed to break the line and get away. But though after that we sat patiently for an hour or two, there were no more fish to be had. The pirate was cruising about, and honest fish were not out in that neighborhood.
“Mr. Millward,” said I after a spell of silence, uninterrupted by bites, “I think we are done making rope, or nearly so at last.”
“Why, we are not half done, according to a liberal estimate,” replied he, looking up in surprise. “We have barely enough rope for the gourds, to say nothing of the much greater quantity needed for the two four-inch hawsers.”