An adventure story for boys, it was included in the Every Boys' Library, a collection of works deemed the most popular among boys. Set on an island off the coast of Maine, Woodcraft Boys at Sunset Island is an account of several school-age children and their parents as they explore nature and learn survival skills. They go on adventures, encounter thieves, find a pig on a raft, and through it all, learn the value of self-reliance.
By : May Folwell Hoisington (1874 - 1955) and Lillian Elizabeth Roy (1868 - 1932)
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“SAY! What’s that over there—there near the Cove? Look! There it is again—sticking its fin out of the water,” cried Billy Remington excitedly, as, toggle-iron in hand, he stood in the bow of the large rowboat manned by three other boys.
“Gee! S’pose it’s a shark?” exclaimed Paul Alvord, who, with Dudley West, was visiting Sunset Island, the Maine resort of the Remingtons’.
“Oo-oh! What if it is? Let’s row over and maybe we can have a try to harpoon it!” added Dudley, eagerly.
The “white-ash breeze” soon brought them near the spot where the fin had last been seen and Fred Remington, the oldest of the four boys, rested upon his oars while scanning the face of the water.
“Look—quick! There it is again!” shouted Billy.
“Let’s try and drive it in nearer shore if we can,” came from Fred, who was as eager as the other three lads to become better acquainted with the strange object.
Then began a breathless chase. Four highly excited young fishermen yelling at each other, or pulling madly at the oars when Fred so ordered, and cracking muscles to back water when the need demanded—as was the case whenever the queer hulk of a fish threatened to swim too near the boys’ boat.
However, the creature was already in too shallow water for its bulk to swim and it struggled valiantly, if futilely, to make its escape from the Nemesis in the boat.
“What a whopper!” cried Dudley, while Billy carefully rose from his seat with the harpoon held in his hands.
“Now! Now, give it to him!” called Fred.
Thus importuned, Billy tried his luck. The small harpoon which had been prepared for a chance fling at a porpoise, was let fly at the floundering mass. The aim was true but the iron rebounded as from an oaken plank.
With gasps of wonderment from the boys, the harpoon was hauled back and Billy anxiously tried again. But with the same result.
The huge fish was now seen with its back fin clear out of water in its maddened efforts to swim in the insufficient depth.
“What can it be?” asked Paul, curiously.
“I’m sure I don’t know—certainly not a shark,” replied Fred. Then turning to Billy, he added, “Here—let me have a try at it.”
Billy passed over the harpoon and the boys rowed the boat quite close to the greyish mass so that Fred distinctly saw a great eye.
“Steady boys—quiet now!” warned Fred, raising the weapon above his head.
The big fish lay temporarily resting when Fred launched the iron with all his strength. An accurate aim at the eye which he rightly judged might be vulnerable and the harpoon sunk in the target.
The consuming anxiety of the next few moments seemed like eternity to the boys as they wondered whether they could win out in the mad battle that began the very moment the harpoon struck in. The water was churned as if by a great paddle-wheel; the spray flew over everything while the fish whopped forward, then suddenly backed, then flung itself from side to side in an agonised and frenzied plunge for safety. The harpoon held good however, and Fred paid out about thirty fathoms of line before the victim became exhausted.
It succeeded in gaining deeper water in the frantic battle for life, and had not the iron held securely, the unwieldy fish would surely have broken away to its freedom in the sea.
“It really looks like a young whale, don’t you think so, Fred?” ventured Paul, after the fish had quieted somewhat.
“Nonsense! But it certainly is a queer bunch of hide and bones,” returned Fred.
It was impossible for the boys to handle their prize as it was so heavy, but they managed to drag the monster close to the stern of their boat and then tow it triumphantly in to Saturday Cove where lay a large schooner. The mate yelled at the boys and Fred looked up to find a group of men eagerly watching.
“Come alongside and we’ll haul him out fer you!” shouted the mate.
The boys obeyed and the mate ordered his crew to help. “Pass a bo’line ’round his tail and hoist ’im up!”
“Hit don’t seem to have no tail,” complained a sailor.
“Ner head, nuther—it’s all bulk!” laughed another. Fred passed the harpoon line aboard and the crew tailed on to it. But the combined efforts of the four husky sailors were insufficient to raise the still struggling creature clear of the water.
After a time, however, they managed to get a good view, so that the mate recognised it for a deep-sea sunfish, or mola. He then sent the sailors forward for the large hook used in catting the anchor. They hooked the throat-halliards into this and passed it down to Fred who tried to fasten the anchor-hook in the fish’s mouth. But the beak-like jaws were too small. Finally he managed to hook it into the mola’s eye alongside the harpoon. With this powerful tackle the sailors hoisted the fish out of water.
Visitors and fishermen in every imaginable sort of craft clustered about the yacht, all intent upon seeing the curiosity and securing a good snapshot of it. With the others, came the Captain of the power launch belonging to Sunset Island.
“Hey, boys! What a monster catch!” called Captain Ed.
“It sure is! How much do you reckon he weighs?” asked a man who overheard the Captain’s remark.
“Looks like half a ton to me—but there’s no tellin’ without scales handy,” returned the Captain.
“Hoh! We weighed him all right, Cap—by the scales on his back!” haw-hawed the mate of the schooner.
The joke was an old one with Maine fishermen and the mate resorted to it without thinking, so the Captain caught him up instantly.
“Naw, yuh didn’t nuther! Cuz he hain’t got no scales—see!”
The laugh that broke simultaneously from the crew was thoroughly enjoyed by every one, including the mate, for the mola had a very tough hide but was scaleless. Its apology for a tail was a frill of scallops opposite the beak-end, while the most prominent features were the dorsal and ventral fins, each one about a foot and a half in length.
“Whad’ye say ye th’ot he weighed, Cap?” asked the mate of Captain Ed as soon as the laugh died down.
“Nigh on half a ton, thinks I,” responded the Captain.
That started a new argument among the local fishermen “lying” in those parts about the weight of the fish. During the discussion, Fred managed to shove his boat close to the launch from Sunset Island. Then he hailed Captain Ed.
“Let’s tow the sunfish over home and give father and mother a chance to look at the queer thing.”
So, acting upon Fred’s suggestion, the Captain helped the sailors lower the mola into the water again and remove the yacht’s tackle. The procession started: first, Captain Ed, Billy and Dudley in the power boat, towing the rowboat with Fred and Paul in it. They in turn towed the sunfish, the latter at the end of the rope churning up the water as it careened after the boat.
While the four boys excitedly retailed the capture of their prize, the launch was making good speed across West Penobscot Bay to a group of three small islands lying near the fourteen-mile-long shore of Islesboro, which divides the bay into east and west. The boys’ summer camp was on the most northerly isle which contained about eight acres of land, high, rocky, and closely wooded with fir and spruce.
The middle island, called Isola Bella, was some twenty-four acres in extent and was also high and well wooded. It belonged to Mrs. Remington’s brother, William Farwell, always known as “Uncle Bill.”
The southerly one of the island trio was very appropriately named Flat Island because of its nature: Not a tree upon it and shaped like a skate with a sand-spit for a tail.
The three islands were about a quarter of a mile from each other and about two miles from the mainland where the boys had just caught the mola.
Great was the excitement at Sunset Island when the convoy was discerned through the spyglass. As soon as voices could be heard, and in fact before that time, the eager watchers sitting upon the rocks of Treasure Cove were eagerly shouting and waving hands to the approaching craft...
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