ow he looked forward
to a meal there with eager anticipation. Jim winked at him, then scanned
the bill of fare, and turned to Budge.

"What'll you have, Roger?" he asked. "I see they've some nice fish
here."

"Fish!" almost screamed Lane. "Not on your life! I've eaten so much fish
the last two months that I'm ashamed to look a hake or haddock in the
face. None for mine! Beefsteak and onions are good enough for me."

Jim glanced at Percy. Percy nodded.

"Three of the same," said Jim to the waiter.

They starved until the viands came on, then turned to. Fifteen minutes
later the three orders were duplicated and despatched without undue
delay.

"Try it again, Budge?"

"I'd like to," returned Lane, truthfully, "but I can't."

Jim broke a five-dollar bill at the cashier's desk, and they filed out.

"Sorry Throppy and Filippo aren't with us," said Percy.

"So am I; but we'll even it up with 'em somehow, later."

After an evening with Sherlock Holmes at the movies the three went down
to the _Barracouta_ and turned in. The next morning the fog was not so
thick. They started at sunrise, and reached the island before eleven
o'clock. At noon Stevens and the Italian came in with a good catch of
lobsters.

And now came some of the most enjoyable weeks of the summer. The five
boys were thoroughly acquainted and on the best of terms. Their work had
been reduced to a frictionless routine that left them more leisure than
at first. Lane was treasurer and bookkeeper for the concern, and his
reports, made every Saturday night, showed that returns, both from the
fish and from the lobsters, were running ahead of their estimates at the
beginning of the season.

Percy, in particular, was learning to enjoy the free, out-of-door life,
so different from anything to which he had been accustomed. At the close
of pleasant afternoons, when a land breeze had driven the fog to sea and
the work of the day was finished, he liked to take his Caesar or Virgil
up to the beacon on Brimstone, and lie at ease on the cushion of wiry
grass, while he followed the great general through his Gallic campaigns
or traced the wanderings of pious AEneas over a sea that could have been
no bluer or more sparkling than that which surrounded the island.
Sometimes it pleased him to explore the sheep-paths through the scrubby
evergreens with gray wool-tags clinging to the branch ends, and to
emerge at last from the tangle of dwarfed, twisted trunks on the
nort