"Baptiste," Hans said, "meet one of my new partners, Ramsay Cartou.

Ramsay, Baptiste LeClaire."

Baptiste wrung Ramsay's arm as though it were a pump handle and in spite of his small size, he was very strong. He looked frankly at the boy.

"You have," he asked, "bought an interest in the _Spray_?"

"The _Spray_ is no more," Hans informed him. "She went back to the lake."

"Oh."

For a moment Baptiste was very sober. Then both men laughed, as though they shared some huge secret which nobody else could ever understand.

Baptiste exploded.

"What is it you need, my friend? My boats, my nets, my pier, my life?

Name it and it is yours!"

"No," Hans said. "What we need is barrels. Good oaken barrels with pliant black ash hoops. We also need salt. We have a net and we have a boat."

"That is all you need?" Baptiste seemed disappointed.

"That is all."

Baptiste turned and in rapid-fire French directed orders at three men who were lingering near. At once they began to take barrels built to hold two hundred pounds of fish from a huge pile near the fishing shanty and to stack them on Baptiste's boat. Ramsay read her name, _Bon Homme_.

Baptiste LeClaire turned to his visitors.

"Now that you are here," he said, "share the hospitality of my poor home."

"With pleasure," Hans agreed.

They went into the house to meet Baptiste's wife, a sparkling little black-eyed French woman. Producing the inevitable jug, Baptiste filled three gourds with fiery whisky. Hans and Baptiste drained theirs with one gulp. Ramsay nursed his, both men laughed at him. But the boy could partake of the delicious fish stew which Baptiste's wife prepared.

A half-hour after Ramsay and Hans returned to the Van Hooven farm, a white sail bloomed out in the bay. She was the _Bon Homme_, loaded halfway up the mast with barrels and salt. Hans Van Doorst rubbed his hands in undisguised glee.

"Now," he chuckled, "we go fishing!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

_PARTNERS_

Ramsay was puzzled. Hans Van Doorst had arisen even before the first faint streaks of dawn cracked the night sky and without waiting for anyone else to get up, or for breakfast, he had gone out to work. He was not fishing, for he had assured Ramsay that there would be no fishing until all could take part. Furthermore, Hans had said, the fishing would need all of them. One man alone could not take enough fish to make it worthwhile.

Still, Hans had gone out before it was properly light enough to see.

Ramsay had heard Captain Klaus greet his master from the top of the house. What anyone would be doing out of bed at such an early hour remained a mystery. In the dim morning light, descending the steps to the kitchen, Ramsay continued to wonder why Hans had gone out when he did. He greeted the Van Hoovens, who were already washed up for breakfast, and Marta went to the back door to call, "Hans!"

Captain Klaus' hoarse squawk broke the morning stillness, and a second later there was an answering call from Hans. He was down at the beach, doing something there, and presently he came in.

Ramsay grinned appreciatively at his appearance, for the Dutch fisherman's cheeks glowed like the rising sun. His eyes sparkled, and a perpetual chuckle seemed to gurgle in his throat. Plainly Hans had been doing some invigorating work, but it was work in which he took a vast pleasure. Anything onerous could not possibly put such a shine upon anyone at all. Hans washed at the basin outside the door.

"Ah!" he breathed as he sat down to the huge breakfast Marta had readied. "This looks good!"

"I should think a stale crust would look good to anyone who puts in a half-day's work before anyone else stirs," Marta said.

"It would!" Hans agreed, helping himself to half a dozen eggs and an equal number of bacon slices. "It would, and many a time I have dined on only a crust! But fare such as this! Fit for the angels! I'm the luckiest fisherman alive, I think!"

"Also the most oily-tongued," Marta added. Nonetheless she was pleased.

"I suppose, when we are all wealthy from fishing, you will hire a cook for me?"

"Not I!" Hans said. "Never I! Hiring anyone but you to do our cooking would be as out of place as hiring Joe Mannis instead of a preacher to do our praying! No, Marta! Not elsewhere in Wisconsin is there one who equals your skill with cookery!"

Pieter, who often tried to beguile his wife but seldom succeeded, laughed. Marta blushed. While Hans devoured what he had already taken, then served himself to three more eggs, Ramsay ate almost feverishly.

Today was the big day, the time all of them had been waiting for, because today they went fishing. Ramsay finished and waited with ill-concealed impatience while Pieter and Hans mopped their plates with crusts of bread. All three went outside.

Squawking and chuckling, as though at some huge joke, Captain Klaus winged down from the rooftop to alight on his master's shoulder. He tilted, flapping his wings to balance himself, and caressed Hans' cheek with his hard, cold bill, even while he kept up a running fire of sea gull chatter. Hans reached up to stroke his pet.

Ramsay looked down at the beach, and saw two structures which had not been there yesterday. Hans must have built them this morning. They were windlasses, made of peeled logs, and about eight hundred feet apart. One was the conventional windlass--a drum mounted on two uprights and with a crank that could be turned by hand. The spindle of the other--all these lake men could work miracles with logs or anything else at their command--was set vertically in a stone and log foundation and it had a long, stout shaft protruding from its center. Ramsay looked questioningly at Hans.

The Dutch fisherman shrugged. "It is simple," he explained. "We have but one horse. Therefore, we men work the one while the horse turns the other. Marta can lead it."

Ramsay was incredulous. "You mean we'll take so many fish that a horse will be needed to drag them in?"

Hans' throaty chuckle sounded. "If we do not," he said, "from now on forever you may say that Hans Van Doorst is not a fisherman. Say that he is just a little boy who plays at fishing."

With a fisherman's skill, Hans was coiling a rope. He settled it carefully in the bottom of the boat, so that it wouldn't kink or snarl when paid out, and was alert to avoid stepping on or tangling it in anyway. Folded exactly as Hans wanted it, with all the floats on one side and all the sinkers on the other, the net was overhauled on the stern of the boat. Another coil of rope lay on the net, and Hans tied one end of that to the spindle of the horse-powered windlass.

Then he looked happily at Pieter and Ramsay. "Now," he said, "I need an oarsman."

"I'll row!" Ramsay offered eagerly.

"Go ahead." Pieter grinned.

So expertly that he scarcely ruffled the water and did not even disturb his net or rope, Hans launched the boat. He waded in up to his knees, paying out more rope as he did so, and held the boat steady until Ramsay waded out beside him and climbed into the rower's seat.

Ramsay tried to board cautiously, skilfully, as he had seen Hans do.

Obviously a great deal of careful work had gone into folding the net and coiling the rope. Everything had to be done exactly right, and one clumsy or ill-timed move could make a hopeless snarl out of all. Still, Hans seemed confident and sure of himself. Probably, Ramsay thought, he had done this so many times that doing it was almost second nature. The boy looked expectantly at Hans.

"Straight into the lake," the Dutch fisherman directed. "Keep a straight right-angle course to the windlass; you can do that by sighting yourself from it. Row as swiftly as you wish."

With strong, surging strokes of the oars, Ramsay sent the ponderous boat out into the quiet lake. He watched Hans carefully, trying to note everything he did, and his respect for fishermen grew. The Dutchman sat almost carelessly in the stern, to all outward appearances not even interested in what he was doing. But, as they continued out into the lake, the rope continued to slip smoothly over the stern. There was never a tangle or even a kink. It looked easy, but net-weaving had looked easy too before Ramsay tried it. Beyond any doubt, it took skill and long familiarity with the job to handle six or eight hundred feet of rope in such a fashion and do it perfectly.

They came near the end of the rope and Ramsay slowed his strokes a little. The laughing Dutch fisherman turned to him.

"Sharp left," he directed. "Stay about this far out in the lake and row a bit more slowly. Now we set the seine."

Ramsay followed instructions, watching the beach line to make sure that he stayed the proper distance out, and Hans began sliding the seine over the stern. He did it smoothly, gracefully, as he did everything connected with fishing. Ramsay nodded approvingly to see how well Hans laid his net and how expertly he had guaged the place in which it was to be laid. Instead of curling toward the beach, the seine, obviously controlled by a current that swept into the lake, billowed outward.