to his father that the
fishing at Buccaneer Cove was poor and that he might do better
elsewhere.

CHAPTER V

_In Which Jimmie Grimm Moves to Ruddy Cove and Settles on
the Slope of the Broken Nose, Where, Falling in With Billy
Topsail and Donald North, He Finds the Latter a Coward,
But Learns the Reason, and Scoffs no Longer. In Which,
Also, Donald North Leaps a Breaker to Save a Salmon Net,
and Acquires a Strut_

When old Jim Grimm moved to Ruddy Cove and settled his wife and son in
a little white cottage on the slope of a bare hill called Broken Nose,
Jimmie Grimm was not at all sorry. There were other boys at Ruddy
Cove--far more boys, and jollier boys, and boys with more time to
spare, than at Buccaneer. There was Billy Topsail, for one, a
tow-headed, blue-eyed, active lad of Jimmie's age; and there was
Donald North, for another. Jimmie Grimm liked them both. Billy Topsail
was the elder, and up to more agreeable tricks; but Donald was good
enough company for anybody, and would have been quite as admirable as
Billy Topsail had it not been that he was afraid of the sea. They did
not call him a coward at Ruddy Cove; they merely said that he was
afraid of the sea.

And Donald North was.

* * * * *

Jimmie Grimm, himself no coward in a blow of wind, was inclined to
scoff, at first; but Billy Topsail explained, and then Jimmie Grimm
scoffed no longer, but hoped that Donald North would be cured of fear
before he was much older. As Billy Topsail made plain to the boy, in
excuse of his friend, Donald North was brave enough until he was eight
years old; but after the accident of that season he was so timid that
he shrank from the edge of the cliff when the breakers were beating
the rocks below, and trembled when his father's fishing punt heeled to
the faintest gust.

"Billy," he had said to Billy Topsail, on the unfortunate day when he
caught the fear, being then but a little chap, "leave us go sail my
new fore-an'-after. I've rigged her out with a fine new mizzens'l."

"Sure, b'y!" said Billy. "Where to?"

"Uncle George's wharf-head. 'Tis a place as good as any."

Off Uncle George's wharf-head the water was deep--deeper than Donald
could fathom at low tide--and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom,
upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in
clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight
down t