t, and soon forming it also into a coil.

The next thing was to drag out the iron bar, which came out easily
enough, making Will shake his head at it reproachfully, as if he thought
what an untrustworthy servant it was.

This and the ropes were hidden at last; and they turned to descend, when
Josh exclaimed:--

"Well, lad, I s'pose you won't try any o' them games again?"

"Not try?" said Will. "I mean to try till I succeed."

CHAPTER NINE.

THE YOUNG "GENT" IN THE ETON JACKET AND HIM IN THE FLANNEL SUIT.

"Here!"

This was said in a loud, imperious tone by a well-dressed boy--at least
if it is being well-dressed at the sea-side to be wearing a very tight
Eton jacket and vest, an uncomfortably stiff lie-down collar, and a tall
glossy black hat, of the kind called by some people chimney-pot, by the
Americans stove-pipe.

He was a good-looking lad of fifteen or sixteen, with rather aquiline
features and dark eyes, closely-cut hair, that sat well on a shapely
head; but there was a sickly whiteness of complexion and thinness of
cheek that gave him the look of a plant that had been forced in a place
where there was not enough light.

He was standing on the pier at Peter Churchtown intently watching what
was going on beneath him on the deck of the _Pretty Ruth_, where our
friend Will was busy at work over a brown fishing-line contained in two
baskets, in one of which, coiled round and round, was the line with a
hook at every six feet distance, and each hook stuck in the edge of the
basket; in the other the line was being carefully coiled; but as Will
took a hook from the edge of one basket, he deftly baited it with a bit
of curiously tough gelatinous-looking half transparent gristle, and laid
it in the other basket, so that all the baits were in regular sequence,
and there was no chance of the hooks being caught.

Close by Will sat Josh, busy at work upon an instrument or weapon which
consisted of a large hook about as big as that used for meat; and this
he had inserted in a strong staff of wood some four feet long, while, to
secure it more tightly, he was binding the staff just below the hook
most neatly with fine copper wire.

Sailors and fishermen generally do things neatly, from the fact that
they pay great attention to their work, and do it in a very slow,
deliberate fashion, the fashion in which Josh on that sunny afternoon
was working, with one end of the copper wire made fast to a bolt, to
keep it s