Old Bill Lee himself had been out fishing all day, with very poor luck; but he forgot all about that, when he learned, on reaching the shore, that Dick and his white friends had not returned.

He even pulled back to the mouth of the inlet, to see if the gathering darkness would give him any signs of his boy.

He did not know it; but while he was gone Dick's mother, after discussing her anxieties with some of her dark-skinned neighbors, half weepingly unlocked her one "clothes-press," and took out the suit which had been the pride of her absent son.

She had never admired them half so much before, but they seemed now to need a red necktie to set them off; and so the gorgeous result of Dick's fishing and trading came out of its hiding-place, and was arranged on the white coverlet of her own bed, with the rest of his best garments.
"Jus' de t'ing for a handsome young feller like Dick," she muttered to herself.
"Wot for'd an ole woman like me want to put on any sech fool finery?
He's de bestest boy in de worl', he is.

Dat is, onless dar ain't not'in' happened to 'im." Her husband brought her home no news when he came, and Dick's good qualities were likely to be seen in a strong light for a while longer.
But if the folk on shore were uneasy about "The Swallow" and her crew, how was it with the latter themselves, as the darkness closed around them, out there upon the tossing water?
Very cool and self-possessed indeed had been Captain Dab Kinzer; and he had encouraged the others to go on with their blue-fishing, even when it was pretty tough work to keep "The Swallow" from "scudding" at once before the wind.