The end of the first week in August found them harboured at Eastport.  They stayed there four days, not so much because the place abounded in interest as because the Adventurer, who had behaved splendidly for several hundred miles, suddenly refused to go another fathom.  Steve said he guessed the engine needed a good overhauling, and Perry chortled and offered his services to Joe to help take it apart.  But Joe, in spite of his invaluable and ever-present hand-book, acknowledged his limitations, and the job went to a professional and the Adventurer spent most of three days tied up to a smelly little dock while the engine specialist took the motor down before be discovered that a fragment of waste and other foreign matter had lodged in the gasoline supply pipe.  Fortunately, his charge was moderate.  Had it been otherwise they might have had to stay in Eastport until financial succour reached them, for the exchequer was almost depleted.

They found a letter from Neil among the mail that was awaiting them at Eastport.  Neil was evidently down on his luck and begged for news of the club.  He got it in the shape of an eight-page epistle from Phil.

Perry made a close study of the sardine industry and laid gorgeous plans for conducting a similar venture on the banks of the Delaware when he returned home.  “You see,” he explained, “a sardine is just whatever you like to call it in this country.  I used to think that a sardine had to come from Sardinia.”

“From where?” asked Ossie, the recipient of Perry’s confidences.

“Sardinia.”

“Where’s that?”

“I dunno.  Spain, I think.  Or maybe Italy.  Somewhere over there.”  He waved a hand carelessly in the general direction of Grand Manan.  “Anyway, there’s nothing to it.  A man told me this morning that the sardines they use here are baby herring or menhaden or—­or something else.  I guess most any fish is a sardine here if it’s young enough.  Unless it’s a whale.  Now why couldn’t you use minnows?  There are heaps of minnows in the Delaware River.  Or young shad.  A shad’s awfully decent eating when he’s grown up, and so it stands to reason that he’d make a perfectly elegant sardine.”

“Nothing but bones,” objected Ossie.

“A young shad, say a week-old one, wouldn’t have any bones, you chump.  At least, they’d be nice and soft.  It’s a dandy business, Ossie.  All you have to have is some fish and a lot of oil and some tin cans.”

“Sounds easy the way you tell it.  I suppose you pour the oil in the tin can and drown the fish in the oil and clamp the lid on, eh?”

“N-no, there’s a little more to it than that.  There’s something about boiling them.  They have big kettles.  Want to go over this afternoon and see them do it?  There’s a fine, healthy smell around there!”

“Thanks, but I got a whiff of it a while ago.  Unless you want me to sour on sardines, Perry, you won’t take me to the place they build them.”