"Are you going to sell her?"
"I am not," Ken would say, maddeningly, jingling a handful of bolts in
his pocket; "not I."
The patch in the _Flying Dutchman_ was not such as a boat-builder would
have made, but it was water-tight, and that was the main point. The
motor required another week of coaxing; all Ken's mechanical ingenuity
was needed, and he sat before the engine, sometimes, dejected and
indignant. But when the last tinkering was over, when frantic spinnings
of the flywheel at length called forth a feeble gasp and deep-chested
gurgle from the engine, Ken clapped his dirty hands and danced alone on
the rocks like a madman.
He took the trial trip secretly--he did not intend to run the risk of
sending Phil and Kirk to that portion of Davy Jones' locker reserved for
Asquam Bay. But when he landed, he ran, charging through baybush and
alder, till he tumbled into Felicia on the door-step of Applegate Farm.
"I didn't want to tell you until I found out if she'd work," he gasped,
having more enthusiasm than breath. "You might have been disappointed.
But she'll go--and _now_ I'll tell you what she and I are going to do!"
CHAPTER VIII
WORK
On a morning late in May, a train pulled into the Bayside station, which
was the rail terminal for travelers to Asquam, and deposited there a
scattering of early summer folk and a pile of baggage. The Asquam
trolley-car was not in, and would not be for some twenty minutes; the
passengers grouped themselves at the station, half wharf, half platform,
and stared languidly at the bay, the warehouse, and the empty track down
which the Asquam car might eventually be expected to appear.
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