“You haven’t answered me about the kinds of sandwiches you can put up,” Jack reminded him.
“Not very fancy in that line, young feller. Cheese, or sardines; that’s all.”
“Give me three of each, then,” begged Jack. He seized the first sandwich that was prepared and began to eat it.
“Hungry, eh!” asked the storekeeper.
“Yes,” Jack admitted; “for want of anything better to do.”
“Foller the sea, don’t ye?”
“Depends,” muttered Jack, his mouth half full of sandwich. “When I’m going before a brisk fair wind, sometimes the sea follows me.”
“’Spose so,” grinned the storekeeper, passing over the second sandwich. After that, the fellow got in slightly ahead of the submarine boy’s appetite, though Benson finished the whole meal in a few minutes.
“Now, if you’ve got a bottle of soda water, to wash that all down with,” hinted Benson. It was forthcoming, also a smoky-looking glass.
“So you haven’t had any strangers here lately,” hinted Captain Jack.
“Nope.”
“Any craft been fitting out to sail to-night or first thing in the morning?”
“Nope.”
“Gracious, but this is a dead place,” laughed Jack. “Must be a lot of shacks for rent around here?”
“There was one place,” stated the storekeeper, “but a dude feller hired it last week. Said some sort o’ fishing club’d be down this way to fish, once in a while. That kinder minds me,” went on the storekeeper. “I guess maybe some o’ that crowd are down, ’cause I saw a light up there at the house, jest come dark.”
“If there’s a fishing club down here, that ought to make business good for you,” suggested Captain Jack.
“Dunno. They can start tradin’ as soon as they like. I’m ready.”
“Which house has the fishing club hired?” was Jack’s next question.
“Why, I guess you can make it out from the door,” replied the storekeeper, coming out from behind the counter and going to the front of his establishment. “There, if yer eyes are good, you can jest make out a building over there on the point. See it? Well, there’s a little boat wharf in front that ye can’t see until you get closer.”
Jack had found out just what he wanted to know. He had the very information for which he had been fishing, nor did he believe the storekeeper suspected him of undue curiosity.
“Well, I’ve got to be moving along, now I’m fed,” announced young Benson. “The yacht I belong to is some distance from here. Good night!”
Nor did Captain Jack linger in the village. Had anyone stood still in that street and stared after Benson, he would have seen the boy vanish in the darkness.
Captain Jack, however, had not disappeared from the scene. He was merely shifting to the part of it that interested him most. Cautiously he stole out along the further side of a ridge of land, toward the rickety old house on the point.