Bill McDonnell is really Captain Billy Bones, the famous pirate. That's what all us kids on the island call him anyway. He has a red beard and spaces between his teeth and can pick up me and Joel Page both under his arms and jump up on a ledge with us like he was kidnapping us. He can swing higher than anybody on the rope hanging from our oak tree. I've seen him wrestle my Dad to the ground and my Dad is more than 200 pounds. Billy has a sea chest, a real one, with maps in it, and he has cutlass and a spyglass too, but we've never seen them. If you could hear him laugh like that "Har harr!" you'd know it was him.

Normal days he's out fishing in his boat the Nana. The Nana is grey and white with a dark red stripe that makes her bow look sharp and pointy. She has a lot of house on her to cover over the diving equipment Bill and his partner used to go diving for scallops. The little part of the house aft is built over the motor that squashes air and jams it into the tanks they use for diving. The little house is where I sit when I'm aboard because I can hang my legs over and it has a handle on the top and it's where I'm out of the way so my Dad isn't always fussing at me.

Anyway, after we finished getting mackerel we stopped over to York's Island for something. It was in the evening, foggy, and starting up to rain. All the houses there in the harbor at York's Island are empty and old. People used to live there in the old days but now nobody does except old Simon Weed and his friend Cusk. The place is real spooky, especially in the fog when it looks like smoky breath coming out of the doors and windows. Now there's a weir in the harbor too, kind of a small one with one net all around in a circle and spruce poles taller than most weir poles. The net's all full of holes and has garbage caught in it.

The thing that gave me the shivers, even with Billy Bones and my Dad aboard, was seeing old Simon Weed right there and seeing us steering right up to him. I was some thankful I was up there on top of the house out of reach. Old Simon was standing up to his ankles in water on one of those floating pile-driver platforms: that's a big wooden raft with a tower on it that drops a granite block down on the poles to drive them into the bottom. Old Simon was standing next to his big outboard hauling on something in the water. His dog was standing there too, scrunched down with his hair up, snarling at us.

Billy hailed him and he hollered back to us to come see what it was he had on his line. Whatever it was, it was moving him. It was moving his outboard, his dog and that huge platform around and around in a slow circle. He wasn't hauling on a fishing line, but a regular pot warp. He was leaning right back against it cussing at it with no teeth. He hadn't shaved maybe in a week. Cusk was nowhere around and I was glad for that.

We tied off on the platform and my Dad and Billy went aft to look over and see what it was he had. I could see pretty good from where I was sitting, but I moved over anyway so I could see straight down over the port side.

It was a turtle -- the biggest turtle in all the world. It was about two feet under the surface all snarled up in a mess of buoy line with a buoy, an orange one of Simon's tucked under his shoulder. Part of the line was turned twice around his shoulder where the flipper came out and the other part was turned around his neck. His neck and his shoulder were all chafed but he was still swimming away from Simon, real slow and strong. Simon had him cleated off, but he hauled on him anyway cussing him saying words Billy knew but I'll bet my Dad didn't, because he looked up at me real quick like he didn't know what to do about the cussing and couldn't decide.

Anyway the turtle was huge like I said. He was black, with seven ridges running down his back. He had huge flippers and a head bigger than mine. I'm fifty inches tall, but this turtle was longer. If you ever saw the drawing of the Mock turtle on the beach in Alice in Wonderland, you know what this one looked like. When he came to the surface for a breath he made a noise like a human breathing hard when he's swimming.

Billy asked Simon. "What are you going to do with him?"

Simon gave a queer look and said he didn't know. He had a drop of water hanging off the end of his sharp nose. He said this here was maybe a thousand pounds of turtle and Billy agreed it was, maybe more.

My Dad said he thought it was a leatherback but he wasn't sure. He said it came all the way up from South America. He said that kind of turtle could cross the whole durned ocean in a week if it wanted.

"I don't know what it's called. It don't make no difference to me. Look how strong he is! See him pull on the platform! Look at him! He's been tied off here since yestiddy about three o'clock. Almost thirty hours And he's still hauling away like he's gonna get someplace, going round and round on this mooring."

When Simon said this the turtle came up again for air, making a sound of breathing that got sadder every time. Then he went underneath the Nana to hide from us and he rested there for a minute.

"You look!" said Simon. "He'll rest then he'll strike out again. I don't know how long he's been snarled in this line, maybe four days. He's some strong, ain't he?"

"Let him go Simon!" I said and scared myself. Simon looked up at me and laughed.

"If I let him go in here young fella, he'll swim right for my weir there and get caught in it looking for them herring to eat. He'll tear my net all to hell, now won't he?"

Billy said we'd be glad to tow the turtle out into the channel and turn him loose there. "We could tow him out for you right now if you wanted," he said.

Simon looked at us kind of crooked and gave a yank on the line.

"And suppose this meat is worth two dollars a pound? With half a ton of it right here in my hand? What then? That would make two thousand dollars."

Every time the turtle surfaced for air and made that whooshing sound I could see his eyes. He wasn't looking at anything special, he was just looking away from Simon and that platform, out towards the open water. Then he'd go back under and start swimming again no matter how those ropes hurt his neck and shoulder.

It started to rain a little bit and my Dad made me put up the hood of my raincoat, even though him and Billy got to get wet.

"Where'd you get him?" Billy asked.

"Just outside here." Simon pulled on him again. "Look at him turned over."

He hauled on the line so the turtle rolled over on his side then turned upside down. He gasped and struggled to right himself real hard , but Simon, to show us his belly, kept him turned under. I held my breath with him and we barely made it back over right.

"Look at them jaws! One chomp could take off your arm!"

"We could pull him up on to the platform, then rig up a plank or two and slide him aboard here and ferry him out to deep water," said Billy Bones. "You try to get him in that skiff of yours and he'll swamp it sure."

"Mike Longstreet caught one of these a couple of years ago," said Simon. "He got it right out here like this one. He tied a warp around its neck and planed it in to Stonington, all the way. He says he had it open full throttle and that turtle, it was as big as this one, planed right up all the way in."

He held his flat hand on an angle to show us.

"When he got to Stonington, it was still alive."

Billy asked what Mike did with his turtle. Mike is a friend of Simon and the same kind of guy only worse.

"He shot it and it sunk right there in the harbor. Must have been ten people watching him." Simon shook his head like he had just seen something amazing.

"See that, he said. "See how he does that? He'll swim slow and hard against this line, then he'll come up for his air; then he'll rest for a minute, get some air again, then start swimming all over again. He's been doing that all day and all night now. Ain't that something?"

"If you was going to tow him someplace, you could just leave that line around his shoulder and cut the one clear of his neck," said Billy. "Then you could tow him without hurting him."

I was starting to get mad. I couldn't help sneezing either. I was mad at Dad and Billy for just talking like that when they could have reached over and cut the turtle loose. The turtle was getting tireder and tireder. Simon was pretending he wanted the turtle; Billy was pretending he didn't want it. They were both pretending they believed each other.

"What do you want for it," Billy finally asked. My Dad was surprised, but I wasn't.

"What you want with this thing anyway?" Simon was acting like he didn't know Billy was going to turn it loose.

"Oh, I don't know what I'll do with it," Billy was looking up into the for for an idea. "And I'll be darned if I know what I could give you for it, in cash."

"It's my weir I'm worried about. It's already got them holes in it below the water line. You remember I told you about that?"

"Yes," said Billy. "I remember. All right. I'll dive on your weir and you give me the turtle in trade for the job. I'll take the chance on what I get for it."

"You come out next week, say Monday, and fix them holes?"

"Well, Monday I have to..."

Simon squinted his eyes. He gave a jerk on the line to hurt the turtle. Billy didn't show nothing; he said OK, Monday was good.

"And you won't let it loose around here?"

"No," Billy said. "I'll take that deal then," said Simon. He acted like it wasn't good enough, but he would take it out of the kindness of his heart.

I swear I thought that turtle was going to cry. I thought if it didn't cry then I might cry watching it trying to get away so slow. He tried so hard to get air, then tried to hide himself, ashamed to be caught by such things as us.

They kept talking. They saw how hard it was for the turtle, but they kept talking. I couldn't believe it. I didn't understand til later that they had to, that Billy had to close it right so he could do what he did without worrying about it.

So they finally agreed. At least Simon agreed to let us have it. They decided it wouldn't do to try to haul it aboard the Nana on the diving platform. They thought it might deflate in the air for some reason, even though my Dad kept saying they came ashore to lay their eggs, whatever he meant by that.

We got him alongside ever so gently, over to port. I hitched over to see better. He seemed to know he was going, but he still tried to get away from the boat, from us. So Dad kept him hauled in as gently as he could with the line on his shoulder. With the gaff he kept his rear end going the same way as us. We went out slowly.

Even with the Nana's big engine we could feel the turtle pulling, like a little wave under us every time he pulled on his flippers. Before we even got outside the Yorks Ledges he began to slow down and look limp.

"Dad! Dad! Let him go now! Cut him off please! Look how limp he's getting!"

Billy heard me and came running back. We were just out of sight of Simon and his dog and had come into the channel. "The tide's running out," my Dad said. "We can cut him loose here and he'll go out with the current."

"Just a little farther," said Billy. He steered with one hand and watched over the side at the turtle. Finally even Billy couldn't stand it any longer and he threw her out of gear.

He came back with one of his sharpest diving knives, the one he got for Christmas. He leaned over into the water teetering on the washboard, and put one arm right under the turtle's neck to hold on like the turtle was a big stuffed animal and didn't have a mouth that could chomp off his arm like nothing. From up where I sat I could see how big it was because Billy's red head was the same size as the turtle's head next to it.

He cut real carefully not even touching the turtle, then he eased up out of the water and stood there looking. Nobody said anything. Dad said I was never so quiet in all my life.

The turtle pulled once at his flippers kind of hopelessly like he was still on the rope but had to keep pulling. But when he pulled this time he moved away, maybe ten feet with one weak pull. He tried it again, like he didn't believe he was free, and he pulled even further off. With one more pull he went down a few feet and just floated for a minute, not coming up for air. We thought it was too late; he was hurt bad and we thought he was going to die.

But ten he came back up. Whoosh! Loud this time, strong. When he dove again he did it hard and went out of sight. We watched and watched following him slow. Billy was driving with his head out of the house; my Dad was standing in the bow.

We saw his head surface again out toward the open sea in the current and my Dad started to cheer. I did too, and I choked a little bit cheering for him, but I thought that they'd think that my face was just wet from the rain.

We watched him go.

On the way home my Dad told Billy he thought he should be awarded some way. Since the diving was at least a hundred dollars worth of work.

Word got around on the island when we got home. Everybody acted like Billy was a great man all of a sudden which ain't exactly right because we know, especially us kids and my Dad, that he's been a great man all along, not including the turtle.