If not, we can capture the sloop and take it in ourselves!" "But there is no breeze," Bart reminded.
"That is so.

But call in the fishermen.

We may get some opinions out of them." Jabez and Peleg Slocum, the deaf-mute owners of the fishing-sloop _Sarah Jane_, of Sea Cove, New Jersey, were what one might call "queer ducks"; a thing not so much to be wondered at when the fact that they had been deaf and dumb from infancy is taken into consideration, with the further fact that the greater part of their fifty odd years had been spent in the lonely and precarious calling of Atlantic fishermen.

They were rough and gnarled and cross-grained, like the sloop whose deck they trod; yet, in spite of all, like that same sloop, they had some good qualities.
To them fishing was the end and aim of existence.

Hence, as soon as Merriwell, with the aid of pencil and paper, began to talk of being taken straight to New York, the fishermen shook their heads.