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Updated: May 31, 2025
You'll know what to do for him. I'll go back and help get the other men off. Their lives mean just as much to their people as his does to you." Working with Budge and Throppy, he took in the slack of the hawser, and soon the chair was dancing back to the yacht. Meanwhile Jim and Percy were working over Mr. Whittington, and before long he recovered his senses. With a groan he half raised himself.
The meal over, Spurling turned to him with a serious face. It was plain he had something of importance on his mind. "Whittington," said he, "I've been talking matters over with Budge and Throppy, and we're all agreed it's time we came to an understanding. Things can't go on in this way any longer. To put the matter in a nutshell, we can't afford to have you living off us and not working.
"Got the children all in bed for the night," said he. "Now I can make you a little visit with a clear conscience." He spoke faster and more cheerfully than he had done before. The melancholy in his bearing had vanished. Jim thought he detected a slight odor of liquor about him, but he could not be sure. They all sat down together, and Throppy brought out his violin.
Rinsing the mass in a pail of water, he picked from it the foot of a bird; round its slender ankle was a little band of German silver or aluminum, bearing the inscription, "U43719." He held it up for the others to inspect. "That's the foot of a carrier-pigeon!" said Throppy. "I know a fellow at home who makes a specialty of raising 'em.
By the dim light of two lanterns, Jim, Throppy, Budge, and Filippo were busy baiting the trawls with herring and coiling them into the tubs in the standing-room. Percy had withdrawn from his companions and lay across the heel of the bowsprit on the decked-over bow.
"Wait till we hear what Jim says," was Lane's reply. The remaining traps were hauled in double-quick time and they made a bee-line for Sprowl's Cove. Spurling and Throppy came in at noon on the Barracouta. Jim's brows knitted when he heard of their new neighbors. "What should you say they were?" he inquired. "Don't know," answered Lane. "Only I'm sure they're not Yankees."
The other man dropped into the cabin and reappeared with the two guns. Jim threw himself flat on his face. "Down, boys!" he cried. A hail of birdshot peppered the bluff and the woods behind it as both the double-barrels roared out in unison. One leaden pellet drew blood from the back of Jim's hand, while Throppy, a little slow in dropping to cover, was stung on the cheek.
Percy countered that night as follows: DEAR DAD, I'm still sticking. Throppy stepped out of the fish-house at the close of a breezy afternoon and started for the camp to wash up. The morning's catch had been split and salted; it just filled a hogshead. He glanced seaward at the white-capped squalls chasing one another over the broad blue surface.
Winthrop Stevens, or "Throppy," as his friends nicknamed him, claimed a small Massachusetts city as his home. He was the best scholar of the three, dark, quiet, studious, with a decided trend toward mechanics and electricity. Though not obliged to work for his schooling, he had always chummed with the other two, and with them had been a waiter at a shore hotel the previous season.
He went outside to smoke a cigarette. The bull-frogs were singing in the marsh. Inside, Roger was making a start on teaching Filippo English, and learning a little Italian in return. Throppy was tuning his violin. He played a short selection, and then the boys turned in. "To-morrow we start fishing in dead earnest," said Jim.
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