d one craft after another, but
just then Dabney sung out:

"Hullo, Jersey, what are you doing with two grapnels? Is that boat of
yours balky?"

"Mind your eye, youngster. They're both mine, I reckon."

"You might sell me one cheap," continued Dab, "considering how you got
'em. Give you ten cents for the big one."

Ford thought he understood the matter, and said nothing; but the "Jersey
wrecker" had "picked up" those two anchors, one time and another, and
had no objection at all to talking "trade."

"Ten cents! Let you have it for fifty dollars."

"Is it gold, or only silver gilt?"

"Pure gold, my boy, but seein' it's you, I'll say ten dollars."

"Take your pay in clams?"

"Oh, hush, I haint no time to gabble. Mebbe I'll git a job here, 'round
this yer wreck. If you want the grapn'l, what'll you gimme?"

"Five dollars, gold, take it or leave it," said Dab, as he pulled out a
coin from the pay he had taken for his blue-fish.

In three minutes more the "Swallow" was furnished with a much larger and
better anchor than the one she had lost the day before, and Dick Lee
exclaimed:

"It jes' takes Capt'in Kinzer!"

For some minutes before this, as the light grew clearer and the fog
lifted a little, Frank Harley had been watching them from the rail of
the "Prudhomme" and wondering if all the fisher-boys in America dressed
as well as these two.

"Hullo, you!" was the greeting which now came to his ears. "Go ashore in
my boat?"

"Not till I have eaten some of your fish for breakfast," replied Frank.
"What's your name?"

"Captain Dabney Kinzer, of 'most anywhere on Long Island. What's yours?"

"Frank Harley, of Rangoon."

"I declare!" almost shouted Ford Foster, "if you're not the chap my
sister Annie told me of. You're going to Albany, to my uncle, Joe
Hart's, aren't you?"

"Yes, to Mr. Hart's, and then to Grantley, to school."

"That's it. Well, you just come along with us, then. Get your kit out of
your state-room. We can send over to the city for the rest of your
baggage after it gets in."

"Along with you, where?"

"To my father's house, instead of ashore among those wreckers and
hotel-people. The captain'll tell you it's all right."

It was a trifle irregular, no doubt, but there was the "Prudhomme"
ashore, and all "landing rules" were a little out of joint by reason of
that circumstance. The "Swallow" lay at anchor while Frank got his
breakfast, and such of his baggage as was not "stowed away,"