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                       THE POLLY PAGE YACHT CLUB

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[Illustration: She Leaned Forward, Intent on Every Point]

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                       THE POLLY PAGE YACHT CLUB

                                   BY

                           IZOLA L. FORRESTER

              AUTHOR OF “ROOK’S NEST,” “US FELLERS,” ETC.

                              PHILADELPHIA
                         GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
                               PUBLISHERS

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                          Copyright, 1910, by
                       George W. Jacobs & Company
                        Published November 1910

                          All rights reserved
                          Printed in U. S. A.

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                                CONTENTS

                I The Launching Party
               II Glenwood
              III Polly Ships Her Crew
               IV Fitting Out
                V On Board the “Hippocampus”
               VI Three Days at Sea
              VII Landing at Lost Island
             VIII Dropping Anchor
               IX The Captain Calls
                X A Home on the Rolling Deep
               XI Smugglers’ Isle
              XII “Girl Overboard”
             XIII Polly’s “Current Events”
              XIV “Mr. Smith of Smugglers’ Cove”
               XV The Pearl Fest
              XVI The Captain’s Party
             XVII Polly Prepares
            XVIII The Regatta
              XIX The First Event
               XX The Winner of the Junior Cup

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                             ILLUSTRATIONS

    She leaned forward, intent on every point

    “Girls, I’ve got it!”

    A happy, dripping lot

    “First batch of marshmallows ready!” called Ruth

    Combing their hair and chatting, girl fashion

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                       THE POLLY PAGE YACHT CLUB




                               CHAPTER I

                          THE LAUNCHING PARTY


“She was here just a minute ago. Wait till I find her, girls. We can’t
go ahead without Polly.”

Ruth Brooks dropped her bouquet of white roses on the piano stool, and
hurried out into the long corridor. It was still crowded with people,
although Crullers had played the tenderest, saddest strains of
“Träumerei,” and “Blumenlied,” to let them know it was time to go home.
Ruth paused on the lower staircase a minute to see if Polly’s brown head
showed anywhere below. Between the square reception hall, and the
library, stood Miss Calvert, her figure tall and imposing in its black
silk gown of state, even among so many. If there was one day in the
entire year, when she was radiantly happy, and in her favorite element,
it was Commencement day, so her girls said.

After the closing exercises, the members of the H. S. Club had managed
to slip away unobserved during the reception. Polly had passed the
secret word around that a last meeting would be held in the music room
before school closed for vacation time. Yet in spite of this Polly
herself, founder of the Hungry Six Club, and its president, and chief
cook, was now missing.

Months before, when the fall term opened, the H. S. had been formed as a
mutually protective association. Out of thirty-four pupils, twenty-eight
at Calvert Hall were out-of-town girls. The other six were day scholars,
and all lived at Queen’s Ferry, Virginia. Therefore the six had banded
together, and stood by one another faithfully, against the united force
of the twenty-eight “regulars.”

“What did Polly tell us to wait up here for?” asked Isabel Lee.

“Vacation,” came Sue’s matter-of-fact tone from the curtained window,
where she was watching the long procession of carriages and automobiles
in front of Calvert Hall. “Polly has an idea, and she wants us to sew
buttons on it.”

“Oh, girls, who’s got the chafing-dish? Did any one remember to get it
at all?” Edwina, which the girls cut short to Ted, looked dismayed at
the others, and nobody responded. It was a serious moment. If the H. S.
Club had possessed a coat-of-arms, there would have been a chafing-dish
rampant on a field of fire as part of its symbolism. It had been Polly’s
Christmas present to the club. She had smuggled it in, all unknown to
Miss Calvert or the other girls, and had beguiled Annie May, the <DW52>
cook, to hide it. On special occasions it made its appearance at feasts,
wonderful feasts, prepared with the help of Annie May, when the Hungry
Six foregathered behind locked doors, with the chafing-dish in the place
of honor.

“Open the door, just a little way, girls,” Polly would always say, just
at the crucial moment, and the tempting fumes of some chafing-dish
decoction would float away down the long dormitory corridor, until the
noses of the twenty-eight caught it, and there was an instantaneous
bombardment.

“Hold it open till the last minute when you see them coming,” Polly
would cry, her brown eyes dancing with fun, as she presided in one of
Annie May’s huge aprons, and waved a big spoon. “Just let them get a
good whiff of it, so the clans will gather, and then we’ll bar the
door.”

And the clans always gathered. First from one room, then another, in the
upper dormitories, the “regulars” would troop forth, and cluster around
the door where the day pupils ate their luncheon. Polly always held that
it was wise to wait until twelve-thirty, as by that time the regulars
would have finished eating. Sometimes they would catch murmurs from the
corridor.

“Smells like crab meat,” some one would whisper, and from the inner
shrine Polly would declaim,

“’Tis crab meat, with green peppers.”

Then a deep groan would rise from the “regulars,” and the Hungry Six
would smile at each other, for revenge is sweet. They could not forget
the midnight feasts which the “regulars” held while they were away.

Yet, at the very last minute, they had forgotten the chafing-dish. Some
of the people were already leaving, and the imposing line of carriages
outside the stately old Hall was growing thinner.

“Hadn’t one of us better go downstairs to the kitchen, and find Annie
May,” suggested Ted, anxiously. “Polly’s probably talking to somebody,
and has forgotten all about us. I saw the Admiral lift up his finger at
her, and that signal between them always calls Polly to attention.
Wasn’t it dear of him to come and talk to us! What was it he said? Oh, I
know. Look, girls, like this.” Ted struck a dignified posture in the
center of the floor, her chin set deeply in her lace collar, her brows
drawn down in imitation of the Admiral’s own bushy ones.

                   “Standing with reluctant feet,
                     Where the brook and river meet,
                   Maidenhood and—”

“Girls, I’ve got it!”

In the doorway stood Polly, her curly hair, brown and glossy as a ripe
chestnut, tied back in a cluster of long curls that reached to her
waist, her brown eyes brimming over with mischief, and in her hand,
wrapped carefully in a clean pillow case, was something the girls all
recognized by its outlines.

[Illustration: “Girls, I’ve Got It!”]

“I thought of it the very last minute,” went on Polly, quickly, “Annie
May hid it the last time we used it, you know, and I forgot to ask her
where she had put it. And she’s down in the back hall, crying over the
girls who are leaving, so of course I couldn’t disturb her. So I hunted
around the kitchen, in the wash boiler, and up in her room, then I
guessed. You know the linen closet in the back hall. It was in there,
way down under some gray blankets on the bottom shelf. Wasn’t she the
wise old darling to put it under the gray ones, so it wouldn’t show if
it should happen to get a spot on them! And then I heard Honoria calling
me.”

“Whatever did you do, Polly?” whispered the girls, tensely.

“I slipped the chafing-dish into a pillow case, left it on the hall
settee, and went to see what she wanted. And afterwards, Mrs. Yates sent
for me to be introduced to her.”

“The Senator’s wife?” asked Isabel, eagerly.

“Yes’m. She used to be one of Miss Calvert’s girls when she was young,
and she wanted specially to meet me for the sake of the Admiral. It’s
dreadful, all the things I have to go through for the sake of that boy.
She even said I looked like him.”

Polly’s low, rippling laugh was smothered by a judicious toss of a sofa
pillow from Sue.

“Be quiet, goosie, or you’ll have everybody rushing up here to see
what’s the matter. Put the pillow case over the chafing-dish so it won’t
be seen, and tell us what happened. Why did you tell us all to come up
here?”

Polly seated herself on the arm of the nearest chair, and pushed back
her hair from her forehead with a gesture exactly like the Admiral’s.

“Ladies, and sisters, and dear colleagues,” she began, in imitation of
Miss Calvert’s Commencement Day rhetoric.

“Don’t speechify, Polly,” ordered Ruth, cheerfully. “Hurry up. It’s
getting late.”

But Polly went serenely on her own way, which was characteristic of her.

“We stand at the parting of the ways, don’t we? The last year at dear,
precious old Honoria’s is over for Ruth and Kate. No more will we six
use the historic chafing-dish, no more battle with the twenty-eight
strangers who have lingered within our gates.” She turned her head, and
smiled at Ted and Sue. “Am I on the right thread of discourse, sisters?
Does it sound like oratory?”

“Oh, bozzer,” said Sue, helplessly. “Play ball, Polly, please, please,
play ball.”

“I’ll be good, and stop,” Polly retorted, laughing. “Listen. All the
rest of the girls, excepting us, are going away on vacations. Real ones,
I mean. And for the next two months, what are we going to do?”

“Nothing but rest,” Sue said, dismally.

“That’s just it. We’ll stay around home the way we always do, have a few
picnics, and a few lawn parties, and all that sort of thing. We shan’t
have any real vacation, anything that is different from everything else
we do the whole year round, shall we?”

Five heads shook in unison.

“But, Polly, it would take so much money,” began Ruth, picking one of
her roses abstractedly to pieces.

“If we went any distance at all,” Kate Julian laid down the book she had
been looking over while Polly talked. She met Polly’s eager glance, and
smiled. Kate was nearly eighteen, but both Ruth and herself were firm,
true friends of Polly’s, and the Admiral said he approved because Polly
needed ballast now and then to keep her steady on her course.

“Oh, it’s quite a distance,” exclaimed Polly. “It wouldn’t be any fun to
go along the shore here.”

“Anybody’d think to hear you, Polly, that you had a whole island to
colonize, and an airship to travel in,” Kate teased. “I think you’re
just blowing a lovely bubble.”

Even Polly had to laugh, for at Calvert Hall her rainbow bubbles that
would float so beautifully for a whole minute, then turn into air, were
a steady source of fun among the girls.

“Well, you may laugh, but I have the island even if I haven’t any
airship,” she said.

There was the soft rustle of silk outside, and Miss Calvert stood in the
doorway. She was not the typical principal of a school for girls,
Honoria Calvert. There were too many “laughing wrinkles,” as Polly
called them, around her gray eyes; and the corners of her generous
mouth, and the way the girls clustered about her, told more plainly than
words, how dear she was to them all.

“The Admiral is asking for you, Polly, my dear,” she said. “Won’t the
girls excuse you, now?”

“Tell my commanding officer, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ please, Miss Calvert,”
Polly replied, rising at attention.

“Hurry, girls,” cautioned Miss Calvert, with a warning uplift of her
finger, as she went back to her guests. Polly hurried.

“Girls,” she whispered, “report for duty Saturday afternoon, at
Glenwood, all of you, because if we are going to do this thing, it must
be started right away.”

“Oh, Polly,” pleaded Sue, “is it anything where we can have the dear old
chafing-dish feasts?”

Polly turned around as she reached the doorway, and swung the
pillow-case around her head. Inside it, the chafing dish cover rattled.

“Indeed it is,” she cried. “We’ll need it more than ever. Will you all
be sure to come Saturday?”

“Sure,” echoed all of the girls, solemnly. “Polly’s going to hold a
launching party all her own.”

Polly laughed, and nodded mysteriously.

“There’ll be something happening besides a big splash if I do,” she
said, and hurried out to join the Admiral.




                               CHAPTER II

                                GLENWOOD


The music-room was on the east side of the hall at its farthest end. As
Polly hurried along the hall, she caught sight of a woe-begone figure,
and stopped short. The Admiral was waiting for her just beyond the
arched entrance to the reception room. From where she stood, she could
just see his shoulder, and some iron gray curls which shook a little, so
she knew he must be laughing. The Admiral’s curls were always a
weathervane of his mood. Polly hesitated, then following her first
impulse, she slipped into the library, and put her hand on Crullers’
shoulder. Such an unhappy, moist Crullers, though, very different from
the happy-go-lucky, easy-going girl of the past term. She raised a
tearful face, and sobbed outright.

“I’m not going back home.”

“You’re not!” Polly checked herself. She was not much given to
expostulations. The shortest way around any trouble was straight through
the middle, she always held. “Why aren’t you?”

“The children are down with measles, so I’ll have to stay here for
weeks, and it spoils my vacation.”

Polly considered. It was not a very joyous outlook. During the long
summer vacation, the big gray house was shrouded in darkness, and Miss
Calvert usually went to the seashore for a rest.

“Maybe Honoria would take you with her when she goes away,” Polly
suggested, but Crullers shook her head dismally.

“No, she won’t. She says she doesn’t want any such responsibility as I
would be. I am to be left here with Annie May and Fraulein.”

Polly frowned at such an outlook. Annie May was not so bad. The
big-hearted old  mammy who acted as cook at the Hall was far
preferable as a pleasant companion to Fraulein, the teacher of German,
with her neuralgia and shaded eyeglasses. Polly had always said that she
believed those glasses were the whole reason why Fraulein took such a
dismal view of life. Green glasses were enough to turn Harlequin into an
undertaker.

“Don’t you mind, Crullers, precious,” she said, patting the round rosy
cheek nearest her. “The girls from our own crowd are coming over to
Glenwood on Saturday, and you ask Miss Calvert to let you come along
with them. I have a plan ahead for the summer, and maybe you could go
with us. Who knows? Don’t cry. I never cry except when things are all
wrong, and I can’t fix them right. We’ll find a way.”

The Admiral called in the hallway outside,

“Polly! Time’s up.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Polly, promptly, and with a final pat on poor
Crullers’ head, she caught up her cloak and the chafing-dish from the
hall settee, and joined the Admiral at the door of the reception room.

Miss Calvert was standing beside him, and the tears came in her eyes as
she looked at Polly, slender and sweet in her gown of softest white
mull.

“I shall miss her this summer more than any of my girls, Admiral,” she
said, half sadly. “She has done more this year towards giving the other
girls the right point of view—”

“Now, Miss Honoria, I must insist that you stop filling Polly’s head
with such ideas,” laughed the Admiral, his eyes twinkling proudly, as he
bent over Miss Calvert’s hand with the old-time grace of a gentleman who
could call Virginia his home state.

“Don’t you believe him, Miss Calvert,” Polly said severely. “He’s a
great deal worse than you are. If it wasn’t for mother’s good, sensible,
Massachusetts spirit in me, I’d be so puffed up that I’d blow away with
the first strong breeze. But I do like to be praised, indeed, I do. I
just love to be loved and appreciated.”

Miss Calvert kissed her, and stood in the doorway, as the two went down
the broad steps from the veranda. The Admiral’s carriage was waiting,
with old Balaam on the box, smiling till his face looked like a piece of
shirred black satin. The Admiral handed Polly into the carriage as if
she had been a duchess, and turned to bow once again to Miss Calvert.

“Isn’t she a dear?” said Polly, with a sigh of genuine comfort, as the
carriage turned the corner, and the broad riverside road lay before
them. “It doesn’t seem as though I had finished my Freshman year at
school, grandfather.”

“Finished?” repeated the Admiral. “Why, bless my heart, girlie, you’ve
just begun now. Three more years at the Hall, then four years in
college, and then after that I rather think you and I will tramp around
some rare old corners of this old world that I know of just to freshen
up. And when you come back your aunts will make a society bud of you,
and I shall lose my little messmate.”

Polly’s eyes were grave in an instant. As she put her head down on the
broad shoulder nearest her, and rubbed her cheek on it, very much like a
satisfied kitten.

“You’ll never lose me, grandfather. Don’t you know what mother always
said? We were worse than twins, the way we always stood by each other,
and chummed together. Don’t you remember?”

The Admiral stared at Balaam’s back in front of them. And then he
coughed vigorously, and patted the hand on his knee. It was nearly four
years since Polly’s mother had passed over the mysterious bourne, from
which, we are told, no traveler returns. Polly had been ten then, and
four aunts had offered separately to bring her up properly. But the
Admiral had stood firmly on his rights, and Polly had remained at home
with the Admiral, and her old mammy, Aunty Welcome, to give orders.
Welcome had been in the family since Balaam was first made coachman, but
no one could even guess her age.

“Doan’t ask me sech foolish questions, chile,” she used to say to Polly.
“I dun kept ’count till I was ninety, den I lost track, and I ain’t had
no buffday since.”

She stood at the entrance to the drive now, when the carriage turned
into the grounds of Glenwood, the Admiral’s spacious home on the river
bank. Nearly as tall as the Admiral she was, and spare and strong as
some fine old weather-beaten pine. In spite of newer fashions, she wore
her bandana folded turbanwise around her head, and beneath it a few gray
wisps of hair could be seen. Her under lip protruded greatly, “jes’ on
account of making dat chile behave herself,” she used to say. To-day,
she was smiling grimly, and her deep-set eyes sparkled like old jet as
she looked at the slender figure in white sitting up so sedately beside
the Admiral.

“Don’t you know ’nuff to raise dat parasol, and pertect dis chile’s
complexion, Admiral?” she demanded, haughtily. “Has I got to watch over
her when she’s out of my sight? Ain’t she got a terrible leaning towards
freckles anyway? Wouldn’t she look fine under her snow white bridal veil
all brown freckles? I declar’ I’m ashamed of you, Admiral, I suttainly
am.”

Polly laughed as she stepped from the carriage and, slipping one arm
around the old figure, entered the big house. But Welcome scolded firmly
all the way upstairs to the large, cool south chamber that had been
Polly’s special domain ever since Welcome herself had carried her into
it, a wee baby.

It was a delightful room, the dearest in all the world, Polly thought.
The south windows overlooked the garden, and below the river gleamed
like silver through the thick foliage and clambering vines. Over the old
gray stone walls, rambled Virginia creeper, pushing its tendrils even
around the window casements, and if one leaned far out, one might pick a
cluster of sweet, old-fashioned climbing bride’s roses, from the vine
that wound itself around the trellis just beneath Polly’s pet window.

“Aunty, don’t I look ’most grown-up?”

Polly stopped for a moment before the long mirror between the windows,
and looked at herself thoughtfully.

“’Deed, you don’t,” Welcome responded, resolutely. “Ain’t nuffin’ but a
baby. Getting so self-compinionated, dere won’t be any living with you,
chile, not a bit.”

“I want long dresses pretty soon.” Polly put the idea suggestively, her
brown eyes full of mischief.

“Long dresses! For mercy sakes. Hyar dat chile talk. Don’t need long
dresses any more’n a toad needs a side pocket.”

Polly laughed as she slipped out of her white dress and into a simpler
one for home use; then ran downstairs to join her grandfather. On the
right hand side of the lower hall was the Admiral’s own private retreat,
from which Polly herself was barred admission, save by special permit.
When she reached the foot of the stairs, she hesitated, and listened.
The hallway divided the house equally, running its full length, with
great doorways at either end, opening on broad verandas. Every evening
before dinner, Polly and the Admiral walked in the garden, and told each
other the happenings of the day. It was an old sweet custom, that dated
back to Polly’s toddling days, and they both looked forward to it as the
happy climax to each day’s routine.

Polly took a golf cape from the hall rack, and threw it around her
shoulders. Although it was the end of June, the evenings were still cool
along the river, and Aunty Welcome would scold if she went out into the
night unprotected.

Stretched out at full length before the doorway was Tan, the old setter.
He lifted his head, bent one friendly ear towards her, and beat his
long, silky tail lazily on the floor.

“Tan, you old goose,” said Polly, kneeling beside him, “why don’t you
make a fuss over me? Don’t you know this is one of the golden days of
life for me? You might at least bark! I suppose you’re waiting till I
finish Calvert Hall and college besides. Well, let me tell you, sir, it
is something to be through your Freshman year at Calvert Hall. It is
hard work, I’d have you know.”

Tan dozed lazily off while she talked to him. She rose with a little
sigh, and went softly out into the garden. On the top step she paused,
just for a minute, and lifted her face to the evening light. Polly loved
that old garden. During babyhood and childhood it had been her
wonderland of enchantment, her play country of mystery and make-believe.
It was just sunset now, and the mellow light turned the old gray walls
of the house into battlements of splendor. The garden stretched primly
before her, with its beds of flowers, trimly-cut hedges and last of all,
four terraces sloping to the river. An old cypress stood guard at the
rustic steps leading down to the boat landing. Polly hurried along the
narrow paths until she came to the spot the Admiral loved best. In the
old days she had always called it the Wishing Seat, for if one caught
the Admiral there at the sunset hour, and wished a really good wish, it
was almost always sure to come true. Beneath an apple tree it stood,
with banks of lilacs behind it. A rose bush drooped over one corner, a
bush of old-fashioned musk roses that Polly’s mother had planted there
years ago, palest pink, and so fragrant that even at twilight the
humming birds fluttered around them lovingly.

There had been a sun dial near the old Roman seat, but only the pedestal
was left, and that was overgrown with morning-glory vines. When Polly’s
brown curls had barely reached the top of the dial, she had loved to
climb the two steps of the stone pedestal and pick off the little
trumpet shaped buds, and “pop” them. Didn’t you ever do it? It’s lots of
fun.

The Admiral sat as usual on the old seat, his iron gray hair upcurling
from his high forehead, as Polly had told him once, for all the world
like a surprised cockatoo. He was resting placidly after the
unaccustomed excitement of the Commencement exercises, and Polly looked
down at him with a certain secret pride before she made her presence
known. He was so altogether right, she had decided long ago, this
grandfather Admiral of hers. He had been retired from active service for
years, and still she never could understand how the naval forces of the
country managed to get along without him. He was seventy now, but as
tall and straight-shouldered as a certain naval cadet in the full-length
oil painting over the mantel in the library. His cheek was as rosy and
clear as Polly’s own, and his eyes like hers were as brown and bright as
a robin’s. He wore a moustache and long imperial, both silver white, and
there was an air of distinction about him that was totally
indescribable. Polly declared that even the cab horses standing around
the Capitol grounds bowed their heads when the Admiral passed by. She
slipped her hands over his eyes now, before he had discovered her
presence.

“Guess?”

“Bless me, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Oh, please.” In Polly’s gentlest, most persuasive tone.

“I haven’t the remotest idea who it could be.”

“Then you have to pay a forfeit.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek,
then slipped into the seat beside him.

“Admiral grandfather darling, listen to me.” It was Polly’s regular way
of opening up a serious discussion. “The girls are coming to-morrow, no,
day after to-morrow, Saturday. There are seven of us altogether, Sue
Warner, Ruth Brooks, Kate Julian, ‘Ted’ Moore, Isabel Lee, ‘Crullers’
Adams and my own self. Do you think Aunt Milly will mind my bringing so
many?”

The Admiral chuckled.

“So many? Seven girls, with Welcome and an old chap like myself to look
in on you once in a while to keep you out of hot water,—that’s not many,
Polly.”

Polly’s face brightened.

“I’m so glad you think so. I was half afraid we should be too many. And
it wouldn’t do to ask one or two or three, and leave out any, because we
are all mates. You understand, don’t you, dear?”

The Admiral said he understood perfectly, and Polly paused long enough
to hug him, before she asked,

“Have you ever seen the place at all?”

“In a general way, but I don’t remember much about it. It’s a quiet,
pretty bay, and there’s a village at one end and a row of summer
cottages along the shore. I went up there to attend a regatta one year,
the first year Milly joined the yacht club. She did it for the sake of
the boys, because they were very enthusiastic over their new boats.”

“But you’ve never been on Lost Island.”

“Never.”

“It’s got such a queer name, hasn’t it? Lost Island. I wonder if it ever
did get lost.”

“I believe it did. Seems to me that Milly used to tell how the shore
line shifted about with winter storms, but you girls won’t be there in
stormy weather. If you catch a few heavy equinoctials along at the end
of August, it’s about all you can expect. From what Milly wrote to me,
it is altogether sheltered from the open sea, and the very best place
you could possibly find for a club for girls. Better figure on a good
stock of life preservers.”

“I did put down life preservers, grandfather,” Polly said seriously.
“And I showed Aunty the list, and what do you suppose she said? She told
me that Annie May’s doughnuts would make the best ones she knew anything
about. Isn’t that delicious?”

“Is you out in dat dew and damp, all uncovered, chile?”

Welcome’s resolute tones rang out from the upper window, and Polly
obeyed instantly. She might coax and persuade the Admiral, but with
Welcome there was no compromise, and Polly knew it.

“I’m coming right in-doors now, Aunty.”

“Well, I should say you was. Dis window sill’s jest a-soppin’ wet now.
Admiral, you ain’t got any more common sense about dat chile’s welfare
dan if you was a stotin’ bottle.”

The Admiral rose from the stone seat and tried to argue the point, while
Polly’s dimples danced mischievously at the quick fire between the two.
Dearly did she love a bout between them.

“Aunty Welcome, I really must insist, I really must, on your treating me
with a little more respect.” It was comical to listen to the Admiral’s
appealing tones. “I cannot stand such talk forever. Even a worm will
turn, Welcome, you know, even a worm.”

“Pouf,” came from old Aunty’s indignant lips. “Whoever heard of a worm’s
a-doing anything when it did turn? You come along in out of dat night
air, sah, or you’ll get de collywobbles you’-sef. Come along, now.”

The window closed emphatically, and Polly meekly slipped her arm around
the Admiral’s elbow, and they went up to the house together.




                              CHAPTER III

                          POLLY SHIPS HER CREW


The following day Polly was very busy, mysteriously busy, but not one
word did she speak to anyone of the household, regarding her purpose.
She pored over books in the library, and wrote items down for future
reference. But the Admiral was able to guess her intentions, for every
once in a while, she would hail him with various queries.

“Grandfather, dear, what’s a cuddy?”

“Small cabin up for’ad,” responded the Admiral. “Why, matey?”

“Is it anywhere near the lobscouse?” asked Polly anxiously, tapping her
under lip with her pencil.

The Admiral laughed till the tears came in his eyes, and he had to blow
his nose vigorously.

“I’m sure I don’t see why that’s funny,” protested Polly with dignity.
“It says here that they tackled the lobscouse in the cuddy.”

“I haven’t the least doubt of it,” laughed the Admiral heartily, “and
not one scrap did they leave to throw to the porpoises, either, did
they?”

But Polly refused to be teased, or daunted in her purpose. When the
girls arrived on Saturday afternoon, she was prepared to meet them, and
very businesslike and imposing the library appeared with the earnest
faces gathered around the old flat-topped mahogany table that stood in
its center.

“We all came, Polly,” said Sue, fanning her flushed face with a blotter,
comfortably. Sue rarely stopped for the fitness of things. If she needed
anything at all, she always took the first substitute at hand, rather
than go without. “It’s getting pretty warm weather, sister clubbers,
know it?”

“Sister clubbers?” repeated Isabel. “Sue, how you do talk.”

“Well, it is hot, all the same, isn’t it, Polly?”

Polly laughed, and stepped to the doorway to receive from Aunty
Welcome’s hands a generous tray with ice-cold fruit lemonade in a tall
cut glass pitcher, covered with a snowy napkin, and a plate of fresh
honey jumbles.

“You be suah and stir dat up well from de bottom, chile,” cautioned
Aunty. “Doan’t want all juice when you got orange, an’ banana, an’
strawberries, an’ cherries, an’ mint leaves.”

“Oh, you darling Aunty Welcome,” cried Ted and Sue, and Ruth blew the
old mammy a kiss from her finger tips, while Isabel and Kate smiled.
They were all favorites with her, and knew mighty well how to value her
favor.

Polly set the tray at her end of the long table, and poured out the
luscious summer drink while she went on talking.

“There’s one more to come still, girls. I hope you will all agree with
me and be nice to her. It’s Crullers.”

“Crullers! Why, she has gone home,” exclaimed Isabel.

“No, she hasn’t,” said Polly, calmly. “Her brothers have the measles,
and everybody else’s little brothers and sisters are likely to have it
at Sharon Hill, where she lives, so Crullers cannot go home for a
vacation. I found her crying when I left you girls last Thursday, and I
told her to come to-day. Do you mind?”

“I don’t,” Ruth spoke up cheerfully. “I always liked Crullers, poor
little thing.”

“Poor little thing,” Isabel repeated, dubiously. “She’s heavier than I
am, and can eat nearly a whole pie at once.”

The other girls broke into a peal of laughter over the protest. Nobody
dreamt of taking Isabel or her protests at all seriously. She was always
the first to see the windmills waving their terrible arms in the
distance, and the first one to plan the attack on them. Crullers was a
favorite with all the day scholars at Calvert Hall. Her name was Jane
Daphne Adams, but the combination had proven too great a strain on the
Hungry Six’s sense of humor, so they had cut it short to Crullers. Four
times a month a large box arrived for Jane Daphne, filled with crullers
from home, and she never failed to donate them to the chafing dish
feasts. Therefore she herself had been named in honor of them.

Before there was time to say any more, there was a step in the hall, and
Crullers herself appeared, rather shyly, in the library doorway. She was
plump and rosy-cheeked, with deep dimples and big blue eyes that seemed
to question everything, and if there was anything at all in the way that
Crullers could fall over, she always took a tumble. At school the girls
had declared that Crullers would trip over her own shadow any time. She
was fifteen, and slow in every way, slow to think, or act, or speak, or
learn, and awkward as some overgrown lamb; but behind the awkward
shyness there lay a staunch, faithful nature that Polly knew and loved.
She had found out long ago that it was far safer to depend on Crullers’
slowness, than on Isabel’s hasty willingness that usually burnt itself
out like a pinwheel in two minutes.

“I didn’t know you’d all be here,” said Crullers, hesitating. “Hello,
Polly.”

Polly kissed her, and seated her next herself at the table, close to the
pitcher of lemonade, for she knew the surest way to Crullers’ heart.

“We expected you,” she said, just as if all of the girls had signified
their intention of adopting Crullers into their new circle. “Now I think
we may proceed with the business of the afternoon. I want to read a
letter to you girls, first. It came from my Aunt Milly last week.” Polly
paused, and smiled, as she always did when she mentioned the bevy of
aunts who watched over her from a distance. “Aunt Milly is grandfather’s
youngest daughter, and she’s a dear. She lives in Boston, or at least
just outside, in Newton Centre, and she’s married and has four boys.”

“What are their names?” asked Sue, promptly.

“It doesn’t matter, for they will not be there,” answered Polly, firmly.
“Here’s her letter.” And she read it aloud.

    “My Dear Polly:

    “I am writing this hastily, on the eve of our sailing for London
    town. Your Uncle Thurlow was compelled to go abroad this summer
    on business, and offered to take the boys also, so we are all
    going to join him in London. It has occurred to me that if you
    and father have not already made summer plans, you would enjoy
    yourselves at Eagle Bay. Lost Island has been the boys’ favorite
    outing place for years, and I am sure you would like it. It is
    on the coast of Maine, not far from Bar Harbor, but somewhat out
    of the summer tourist’s beaten track. If you get tired of
    roughing it in the boys’ bungalow on the island, you could stop
    at the hotel on the main shore. But if you care for the open,
    there is a good camp outfit down there, and some boats, and
    perhaps you might turn it into something worth while.

    “It is not really an island, except when the tide comes in.
    There is a neck of land that connects it with the main shore at
    low tide. The boys wish me to add that the Captain will show you
    about everything, and that he and Tom have the yachts down at
    their landing. I hope you will go, and spend a happy vacation.

                                                   “Lovingly always,
                                                   “Aunt Milly.”

“Who’s the Captain?” asked Kate.

Polly shook her head, and laid the letter on the table. “I don’t know
any more about it than you girls do, but I want to go. Grandfather is
willing to act as consort, he says. You know, a consort is the ship that
trots along to look after other ships. That means he will stay up at the
hotel near the telegraph office, and have regular meals. I know him like
a book. But Aunty Welcome will go along as cook, and I suppose we should
have a chaperon.”

“Oh, let’s don’t,” implored Sue, pushing back her hair from her
forehead, as she always did when she was listening intently. “Ruth is
seventeen, and Kate is going on eighteen. Let’s do it all ourselves. It
will be ever so much more fun.”

“And it won’t be as if we were wrecked on a desert isle, Polly,” laughed
Ruth. “There are sure to be plenty other vacationers around with whom we
will get acquainted. I suppose there’s a real house, isn’t there?”

Polly nodded her head.

“I guess so, from the letter. Aunt Milly always lived at the hotel up
the beach, and the boys had an old fisherman’s cottage—”

“Do you mean a fisherman’s old cottage?” suggested Isabel.

“Well, anyway, it was a sort of bungalow, where they camped out.
Grandfather says he remembers that much. We don’t want to take a lot of
things along, girls, just enough to get on with. I can put all I shall
need into a couple of suit cases, and that will save bothering over
baggage.”

“But, Polly, what shall we do after we get there?” Isabel asked,
anxiously. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Are we going to camp
out?”

“We’re going to do just what seems best to us after we arrive,” said
Polly cheerfully. “The boys had a yacht club, I know, and if they had
one we can have one. I want to go ever so much, and I want you girls to
go too. If grandfather goes, and Aunty Welcome, nothing can happen to
us, don’t you see it can’t? I suggest that we organize, or rather
reorganize, right now, and start our first vacation club, and call it,
call it—”

“The Squaw Girls of Lost Island,” said Sue solemnly.

“Oh, Sue, don’t make fun of it,” said Kate reproachfully as she leaned
forward. “I think it will be splendid, Polly. You can count me in, and
I’ll bring my kodak along, too, and perpetuate our memory forevermore.”

“Polly,” asked Ruth, suddenly, her brows meeting in a little frown of
perplexity. “May I say something, please?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the chairman, promptly, reaching for the lemonade.
“Try some of this, though, before you get strenuous.”

“I only want to say that I’m afraid I can’t go, because—” Ruth
hesitated.

“Oh, Ruth, you must go,” cried Polly, anxiously. She dreaded long
explanations. She knew that Ruth was going to tell right before the
girls that it would cost too much, and that she felt it her duty to get
ready for her kindergarten training.

Ruth seemed to read her thought as their glance met across the table,
and instinctively she shook her head, with its close bands of brown
braids, bound around like a laurel crown.

“But we really need you, Ruth,” persisted Polly. “Kate will be the
ship’s husband—”

“The what?” laughed Kate. “This is all news to me. Isn’t it just like
Polly, girls, to arrange all our destinies, and then placidly break the
tidings to us at the last minute.”

“Miss Calvert says I am a born organizer,” Polly declared, decidedly,
“and how on earth can one organize if one lets every member have her own
way? Ruth, you must go along. As I said before Kate will be the ship’s
husband. I notice that no one present has the least idea what that
means. I didn’t myself until yesterday. When a ship is in port fitting
out for a cruise, the ship’s husband is the person who attends to all
repairs, and fits her out for the new voyage. I like it better than
steward, don’t you? So I want Kate to manage that part of our club
business. Keep an eye on general supplies, and profit and loss, and all
that sort of thing. You know what I mean, don’t you, Kate?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Kate, saluting with uplifted finger. “Seems to me,
though, if I am to be a ship’s husband to a yacht club, I’ll be a
Mormon, won’t I?”

As the laughter subsided, Polly went on.

“So if you look after that part of the club, and I take care of the
general business, Ruth ought to be in charge of the bureau of
knowledge.”

“Polly,” exclaimed Sue. “Do talk so we’ll understand you.”

“I am,” answered Polly, emphatically. “If we go to the seashore, we
shall do something besides sail boats, and lie in the sand, shan’t we?
We’ll study shells and seaweeds, and swim, and fish, and all that sort
of thing. Ruth is the only one among us who has studied up and knows
about such things, and she could take charge of all that part of the
vacation, show us how to make collections, and preserve them, and so
on.” Polly hesitated. Out on the veranda, behind the honeysuckle vines
and creepers, dozed the Admiral, with Tan at his feet. Polly wondered
whether he had heard the discussion, and if he had, why he didn’t come
to the rescue. He always did when there was rough weather or any
breakers ahead.

“Would you go, Ruth, if you could?”

Ruth weakened. Polly’s eyes were eloquent, and her tone persuasive.

“I should be very glad to, Polly,” she replied quickly. “It’s splendid
of you girls to want me—”

“We couldn’t get along without you, Grandma,” laughed Ted and Sue
together. “Will you surely go?”

“Well,” promised Ruth. “I will go if I can, and maybe I won’t be glad
to.”

“We need you,” Kate put in, in her steady, serene fashion. “I’ve never
been to the shore. It must be glorious. The Potomac is dear to us all,
of course, and old Chesapeake seems like an ocean in itself, but I mean
right on the banks of the real sea—”

“‘Old ocean’s grey and melancholy waste,’” quoted Polly. “That’s where
we’re going, Kitty Katherine.”

“Neither have I,” Isabel put in reflectively. “Of course we’ve been to
summer resorts, and stayed at hotels, papa and mamma and the boys and I,
but I mean to go to a stretch of shore where you couldn’t find a single
peanut shell, or old tin can around. I hope there are great rocks and
plenty of shells, Polly.”

“There will be along the Maine coast,” Ruth explained. “When you get
south of Cape Cod, you rarely find beautiful shells. I forget the reason
myself, but it is something about the tidal currents. Between Cape Cod
and Cape May, the shells are more common, and there are not so many
washed up along the shore.”

“Didn’t I tell you that Grandma’s knowledge would be valuable,” Polly
cried, triumphantly. “Every time we get stranded on any point of
information, we can appeal to our Bureau, and find out the facts.
Crullers, dear, you take the last jumble. We’ll make you the cook’s
assistant, and you shall eat until your eyelashes have to be done up in
curl papers, and your finger nails crack.”

Crullers smiled at the prospect, as she adjusted her wide brimmed, dark
blue sailor hat, with her class pin fastened to the band in front.

“I am willing to help any way I can, if I may go with you,” she said.

“How much do you figure it will cost each of us, Polly?” asked Kate,
practically. “As ship’s husband, I have a right to know.”

“Only what we eat and possibly, repairs on the boats,” answered Polly.
“Grandfather says he will take us up to Portland by sea, and we are to
be his guests. From there we go by train to Eastport, the nearest
village, and then to the island some way. You figure out how much it
will cost to feed us all per week for eight weeks, and leave a margin on
fish and canned goods. We can catch the fish when we get there, and
grandfather says he will ship a box of canned goods up from New York.”

“I think the Admiral is too kind to us,” protested Ruth, but Polly
frowned at her.

“Isn’t it my plan?” she asked. “If I am to be commodore of a yacht club,
I must look after things, mustn’t I? Talk it over at home, now, and meet
here again Tuesday, if you all can. We want to leave within two weeks,
and less, if possible.”

“I say the end of next week,” said Kate, judiciously. “It can be done,
Polly.”

“And don’t forget to bring along the chafing dish,” added Sue.

Polly walked down with them to the wide entrance gates, where Aunty
Welcome waited, with a bouquet of fresh cut roses for each girl.

Up on the veranda the Admiral surveyed the scene with a good deal of
satisfaction.

“They make me think of a lot of butterflies, Tan,” he told the old
setter. “Or flowers, Tan, that’s the best simile, a garden of girls. It
keeps the heart young just to listen to their laughter, old fellow.”

Tan beat his tail on the floor gently to show he had caught the
sentiment, and approved, and the Admiral’s face still wore a smile of
pleasure when Polly came up and dropped into the chair beside him.

“How’s she bearing on her course, matey?” he asked.

“Handsomely, sir, handsomely,” laughed Polly. “I am sure they’ll all go.
I wonder if they can sail boats.”

“Best find out before you start them off for a yacht club,” advised her
grandfather. “Don’t ship any crew on false premises. You let them know
what is ahead of them before they sign articles, or you’ll have foul
weather as sure as you’re afloat.”

“That may be right, grandfather, dearest, when you’re really shipping
sailors, but when you’re only taking a lot of land lubbers, you have to
explain things to them by degrees, or they’ll run away.”

“And how about yourself?” The Admiral reached down, and pulled at the
long, brown curls that were tied loosely at the nape of his shipmate’s
neck. “Does the commodore of the yacht club know the difference between
a skip jack and a cat boat?”

“Maybe she doesn’t now,” responded the commodore stoutly, “but she will.
Just you wait, and see. And anyway,” she added in a softer tone, with
one of her quick side glances of coaxing merriment, “if she doesn’t,
she’ll have her consort handy, right over on the hotel veranda.”




                               CHAPTER IV

                              FITTING OUT


The following week was filled with what Aunty Welcome called “doings and
makings.” Every day found some of the girls at Glenwood, or Polly making
diplomatic visits around to the various families, winning over fathers
and mothers to the project. And she did not go unprepared, nor unarmed.
Not Polly. Whenever Polly took up a new plan in earnest, she went at it
thoroughly, and gave it a complete overhauling before she accepted it
herself. Mrs. Lee was the hardest of the mothers to win over, perhaps
because Isabel herself viewed Lost Island rather doubtfully.

“Do you think it is quite safe, Polly?” asked Mrs. Lee for the twentieth
time, as Polly sat beside her on the long, cool veranda at the Lee home.
“Isabel cannot swim a stroke, and I am half afraid to trust you girls
around the sea. Does the Admiral really approve?”

“Yes, indeed, he does, Mrs. Lee. He says he cannot think of any better
way for us girls to spend vacation after the winter at the Hall. It will
mean the sea air, and bathing, and plenty of exercise. I think Isabel
really needs a change. She took her mathematics quite hard this year.”

Mrs. Lee smiled at the flushed, eager face bending towards her. Twenty
years back, when she had been a girl like Polly, she could remember just
such an eager, happy face at Glenwood, the Admiral’s only boy, Phil,
Polly’s father. Even with four sisters to spoil him, he had remained the
same frank, chivalrous character all his life.

“Polly, you’re a splendid pleader,” she said. “I suppose I shall have to
let Isabel go. Shall you go by rail or steamer?”

“By steamer, grandfather says. To New York, then to Boston, and then up
to Maine. We will have to take it in sections. And Aunty Welcome is
going with us, and grandfather too.”

“Are you certain this island is suitable for you to live on? Perhaps
there is only a boathouse there.”

“We’ll just have to wait and find out,” said Polly, hopefully.

“Have you figured out the cost at all?”

“Oh, it won’t be much over two dollars a week for each of us, Kate says.
Lots of people have house parties, you know, so grandfather says this is
to be my yacht club party. As soon as we get there, we will organize
properly, and see what the place is like. Isn’t it comical,” went on
Polly, with one of her swift characteristic swerves in the conversation,
“every one of the girls, Mrs. Lee, has gone at the plan in her own way!
Ruth is designing our yachting suits. What do you think they are? Dark
blue duck, with middy blouses, and big white collars with blue anchors
on the corners; and for best, white duck suits with dark blue collars.
We’re going to take two kinds of hats with us: big, rough straw sun hats
to wear on the beach, and white duck hats for yachting, with turned down
brims. Isn’t that a good idea? Ruth’s aunt is a dressmaker, and offered
to do all the cutting and fitting for us, and Kate can run a sewing
machine, so there we are. I tell you, this commonwealth plan is a
splendid one when it comes to saving money.”

Mrs. Lee joined in her laughter, and asked about how much luggage they
were going to carry.

“No trunks at all,” answered Polly. “I think we can manage with
suitcases. Two of the Seniors we know at Calvert Hall did Belgium and
Holland last year with suitcases. It saves a lot of bother if you have
to change cars, or boats, as we will. Ruth says she doesn’t care what
she wears. She’s going to have morning classes for the rest of us, on
shells, and fishes, and mermaids, and all that sort of thing, and Kate
has her kodak, and we’re going to develop our own snapshots.”

“Well, I suppose Isabel will have to go, but I shall add as my
contribution to the outfit—life preservers and water wings—just to be
sure you will be safe.”

“Water wings,” thought Polly all the way home. “I wonder what those are.
I’ll ask Ruth.”

Sue came down to Glenwood that afternoon, and the two sat on the box
couch up in Polly’s room, a “Ways and Means Committee of two,” so the
Admiral said.

“Do you know, Polly Page,” said Sue, with emphasis, “here we are
planning to start a yacht club, and I never was even on a sail boat in
all my life. Ted has been, though. She says she knows how to sail a
‘cat,’ because her brother Bob had one at Lake Quinnebaug last year, and
she watched him.”

Polly looked at her meditatively.

“What’s a ‘cat’?”

“A boat. Ted says it’s a boat built as near like a box as it can be, and
it won’t sink. I guess even if it happened to turn turtle, you could
climb up on the outside, and sit there till things cleared up a bit.”

Polly broke into one of her quick peals of merriment.

“We’d stick like postage stamps, wouldn’t we, in a good rolling sea on
the outside of a boat like that. I want a thin one, Sue, one that just
clips through the water. The trouble is that most girls are as afraid of
the water as cats. Yes, they are. Why, even Ted is afraid! She saw her
brother sail a boat, but what does she know about it herself. We girls
won’t have any boys around to sail our boats for us. We’re going to
learn how to manage our own craft, and it will do us good too. I had a
letter from Aunt Milly again. She says there are five good sail boats up
at Eagle Bay that the boys left in charge of the Captain, and they won’t
need much overhauling this year because Uncle Thurlow had them all
repainted and caulked last spring.”

“Where do they stick the cork?” asked Sue, interestedly.

“Goose, caulk the seams, I mean, put a kind of wadding or interlining
between the seams in the hull. And she says if we should need any more
boats, the Captain has several at his landing of the same build, and
uncle left word with him to take care of us. I don’t know whether we had
better sail in pairs, or each have her own boat.”

“Oh, can’t I sail with you, Polly?”

“You would do better with Kate, and let me have Crullers.”

“She can’t sail one bit.”

“No, but she’d make lovely ballast.”

“Isabel says we must have club colors,” Sue exclaimed, with one of her
mental somersaults. “She wants pale pink and green.”

“Too much like shrimp salad,” said Polly gravely. “We want something
distinctive, and yet simple, that will stand sea and sunshine. Let’s
see, sea and sunshine, blue and gold. A golden sun on a field of blue
for a pennant, and for club colors, blue and gold. How would that do?”

“I like that,” assented Sue. “Can I make them up, Polly? Let me take
care of the colors. I haven’t anything to do for the club specially as
yet. Ted’s making up lists of rare shells and says she’ll bring the
marshmallows.”

“Marshmallows?” laughed Polly. “What are they for?”

“To toast over a driftwood fire, nights on the beach. Ted says they’ll
come in very handy, when we’re all gathered around telling stories. You
take a long stick, put a hatpin through one end, stick a marshmallow on
the end of the hatpin, and toast it. It’s just like broiled whipped
cream.”

“Oh, I know,” Polly leaned her chin on her palms, and spoke
confidentially, “we’re going to have a dandy time, know it, Sue? Ruth
has her guitar, you, Ted, and I have mandolins, and we’ll keep up a glee
club. The dear old book of class songs went into my suitcase first
thing. You just ought to see Aunty Welcome’s outfit. She has a medicine
chest that must go even if everything else gets left behind. Arnica, and
quinine, and ginger, and bandages. Oh, I don’t know what she isn’t
taking along. She says she’s prepared for any emergency except the end
of the world, and if that happens, she’ll just fold her hands together,
and hope for the best.”

“Maybe it will all come in handy. Have you thought about a swimming
suit?”

Polly nodded.

“Gray flannel,” she replied enigmatically. “Four yards double width.
Short sleeves, low neck, skirt and waist joined together, and bloomers.
All trimmed up cute with wash turkey red braid. I bought a pattern, and
Aunty Welcome and I made it our own selves. She says it’s too pretty to
get all wet. Ruth made hers too from my pattern. Why don’t you buy the
kind of flannel you want, and let her cut it out for you, and we’ll all
help.”

“Why not hold a sewing bee, and get everything all done up at once?”
Sue’s eyes sparkled at the notion. “I’ll tell the rest, and we’ll all
come over to-morrow.”

“Go ahead,” agreed Polly. “I don’t care, so long as we get all through
this week. It won’t be any fun finding ourselves in the middle of July,
with only a month and a half for vacation.”

So the following day, the entire delegation waited upon its commodore,
with raw materials for bathing suits and caps. Polly turned the big
upper spare chamber into a sewing-room, and with Kate at the helm, they
started out in earnest. Ruth cut and fitted, under Kate’s directions,
and Kate ran the sewing machine. At about four o’clock they finished,
and on the bed lay the rest of the suits completed.

“That’s what I call getting swift results from good intentions,” said
Kate, with a sigh of relief. “Polly, can’t we have some jumbles?”

“Aunty’s fixing something, but I don’t know what it is, and I wouldn’t
dare disturb her till it’s all ready,” answered Polly. “Come down into
the library, and let’s look at the time-tables again.”

There was no one in sight, as they trooped down the broad staircase, and
the library was shady and still. They pored over time-tables of steamers
and connecting trains for a while, and, as Polly said, made the trip
twenty times before they had started.

“But we really must be serious, and look after all these points,” she
added. “We’ve had fun all winter with the Hungry Six. This club has a
real reason for its existence, a purpose, and we must make it worth
while. It always seems to me as if girls could do so much better if they
would hold hands, and work in unison—”

“Co-operate,” suggested Ruth.

“Yes, that’s just the right word,” Polly agreed, earnestly. “Boys always
co-operate in their clubs. They seem to have the real feeling of
fellowship. You know what I mean, Kate? Where all work together for the
honor and glory of the whole, not just for yourself as a member.”

“Fraulein called it the _esprit de corps_,” said Ruth. “It means the
spirit of the body, or brotherliness.”

“Sisterliness, too,” Polly added. “But it means more than that. It
stands for trueness to one another, and pride in the honor of the club,
don’t you know. You don’t do anything wrong, and you don’t let any other
member do anything wrong, if you can keep them out of it, for the honor
of the club. Anyway, it’s what we girls want in our club, and plenty of
it. Don’t you all think so?”

Six heads nodded emphatically.

“I think we should draw up a set of ironclad rules, and sign them,” said
Ted, solemnly. “Polly, I’ll prick my finger if you say so, and sign with
real red ink.”

“You’d better not make fun of this, Ted,” protested Sue. “Polly’s
commodore, and you’ll find yourself blithely walking the plank, if you
aren’t good.”

“Indeed, she won’t,” said Polly. “I know you’ll all stand by me. If you
weren’t the truest, dearest lot of girls I ever heard of, I wouldn’t go
to Lost Island at all.”

“Here too, Polly,” echoed Kate, with her quick smile.

“Three cheers for Commodore Polly!” Ted stepped up on a chair, and waved
a newspaper as the girls rose, and joined her.

Just at this point the heavy portìeres parted, and Welcome’s turbaned
head appeared in the doorway.

“For de mercy’s sake, ain’t you ’shamed to make sech a hullabaloo, and
de Admiral entertainin’ company.”

“Who is here. Aunty?” asked Polly, cautiously.

“Senator Yates,” said Welcome. “He dun traveled clar down from de
Capitol on purpose, and he’s talking business. Doan’t you let me hyar
any sech commotion again. Shoutin’ like you all’d found a teehee’s nest.
What you s’pose my mammy’d done to me if I’d made a shoutin’ noise like
dat when she had company folks ’round? If I hyar any more of it, you
can’t have any banana fritters and whipped cream. No, sah, not one.
Sound like a pack ob geese and guiney hens, all tied in a bag.”

“Oh, please, Aunty, we’ll be good.”

Seven pairs of young arms clasped themselves around the tall old figure,
their owners promising absolute quiet, if only the banana fritters would
be forthcoming, and Welcome was holding out with dignity, when all at
once the Admiral strolled along the hall from the garden, and with him
was Senator Yates.

“My,” whispered Crullers, as she caught sight of them. “I never saw so
many titles, Polly, as you have here in Virginia. Seems as if every one
of you girls has a major or a senator or a general in the family.”

“So dey have,” said Welcome, proudly. “Virginia’s wah dey makes ’em,
chile. I wouldn’t give two cents for a gentlemun who couldn’t wear some
kind ob a uniform, ’deed I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take any stock in his
pretensions at all.”

The Senator was taller than the Admiral, and smooth-shaven. He was one
of the youngest men in the Senate, and was a power in the Old Dominion.
Polly had seen him at Glenwood often, but to the other girls he was a
stranger.

“I trust we are not intruding, young ladies,” said the Admiral
pleasantly, as they entered the library. “This is a business meeting,
isn’t it, Polly? Senator Yates wishes to address the club on a matter of
interest to you all.”

The Senator’s eyes twinkled, as Polly sedately performed her duty as
hostess, and presented him to the girls in turn.

“I can tell you about it briefly,” he said. “The Admiral understands the
details fully, and will explain them to you later. Mrs. Yates and myself
are greatly interested in your summer project. We believe in outdoor
sports for girls and boys, and we’d like to see our young girls as
healthy and rosy as wind and sun and fresh air can make them. It happens
that we are immensely fond of yachting ourselves, although ours is only
a steam yacht, and we miss half the fun you will have with sailing
craft. At all events, this is the reason for my errand to Glenwood
to-day. Saturday we sail on a short cruise up to Nova Scotia, and around
the coast to the mouth of the St. Lawrence. If you can get ready in
time, and would care to be our guests as far as Lost Island, Mrs. Yates
and myself would be delighted to have you and the Admiral. It is only a
family party, Mrs. Yates, Marbury, and myself. As she told you on
Commencement Day, Mrs. Yates was a Calvert Hall girl, not so many years
ago but what she is interested in the old school still, and she feels in
extending this invitation to you, that it will be a mutual effort at
reviving the school spirit. What do you think of the plan, Miss Polly?”

Polly’s dark eyes were a-shine with surprise and quick, radiant
happiness. She almost caught her breath at the idea.

“I—I think it’s just splendid, Senator Yates,” she cried. “I don’t know
how we girls can ever thank you for your kindness.”

“Shan’t we be too much trouble?” asked Ruth, anxiously.

“Not one bit of trouble,” replied the Senator heartily. “Seven girls in
all, did you say, Miss Polly?”

“Yes, sir, seven in all.”

“And do you think you can get ready by Saturday? Only two days more.”

The girls looked at one another, a little perplexed at the brief notice,
but Polly waived all doubts aside.

“We will be ready,” she said, positively. “We must.”

“I will send the motor boat up the river after you at seven in the
morning,” continued the Senator. “The _Hippocampus_ weighs anchor at
eight. You had better make your arrangements to meet here at Glenwood,
and go aboard at the Admiral’s landing. It will save time. And I am
very, very glad that I am able to take back the news of your acceptance
to Mrs. Yates.”

When they were alone once more, Polly sank down in a Morris chair, and
smiled blissfully.

“Girls, have you ever seen the _Hippocampus_?” she asked.

“It’s a steam yacht, isn’t it?” said Sue, while the rest listened
eagerly.

“It’s a dream afloat,” said Polly, solemnly. “All shining brass, with a
white hull, and silk curtains—silk curtains at the cabin windows,
children—and tufted leather walls, and—”

Ted perched herself on the window-seat, and sang softly, with a comical
lisp,

     “I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea,
     And it was filled with pretty things, for Polly and for me.
     There were raisins in the cabin, sugar kisses in the hold,
     The sails were made of silk, and the masts were made of gold.”

“Goose,” exclaimed Polly, tossing a sofa pillow at the scoffer. “Wait
until you see it.”

“There’s one thing certain,” said Ruth, “we shall appreciate our own
little flotilla all the more, when we have seen this queen of the seas.
I think we should send Mrs. Yates a united vote of thanks.”

“I’ll do it,” Polly declared, reaching for note paper at once. “I’ll do
it now.”

Aunty Welcome put her head in at the door.

“Anybody hyar want banana fritters, an’ whipped cream?”

The meeting was broken up instantly, and the girls followed Welcome out
to the arbor where the feast was spread. But Polly lingered until she
had written the note of thanks to Mrs. Yates, and when it was completed
she went to find the Admiral and get his opinion.

“Is that right, grandfather?” she asked, with one arm around his
shoulders, as she knelt beside him at his desk.

“Seems to be all shipshape,” answered the Admiral, heartily. He smoothed
Polly’s head tenderly. “How is the Naval Board of Special Inquiry?”

“Eating banana fritters, sir,” whispered Polly. “We’re going to sail
Saturday morning sure.”




                               CHAPTER V

                       ON BOARD THE “HIPPOCAMPUS”


The morning of the sailing came quickly, it seemed to the little band of
voyagers. Polly was up, and fully dressed by five, making her final
arrangements, and the Admiral was “on lookout,” as he said, with Aunty
Welcome’s nephew, Stoney, carrying the luggage down from the house to
the boat-landing.

When the girls began to arrive, Polly was busy pinning and hooking Aunty
Welcome’s collar and belt at the last minute, and it was a labor of
love.

“Don’t squoze me, honey, don’t squoze me a particle,” cautioned Aunty,
puffing over the unusual exertion. “’Deed, I feel as if I had de equator
twined around me now. Whar’s dat big palm leaf fan? Stonewall! You,
Stonewall Jackson U. S. Grant Brown, you bring me dat fan instanter,
sah, hyar me?”

Stoney grinned, and slipped off the Admiral’s steamer trunk with the
fan. Stoney was proud of his name. Aunty had been strictly neutral
during the war, and when Stoney had been born, she had been his sponsor,
and had perpetuated her neutrality in his name, with a slight leaning
towards the South.

“You had better go ahead with the trunk now, Stoney,” Polly told him.
“Here come the girls. You go too, Aunty, and that will give you a chance
to rest in the launch a minute.”

“Ain’t you most ready, you’ own self, chile?”

“All ready,” laughed Polly, as she took her long gray cloak over her
arm, and her mandolin case. “I want to say good-by to Mandy and the
rest.”

So while Stoney and the others trudged ahead down the path that led to
the little landing by the riverside, Polly ran to the kitchen, and
kissed the black, shiny cheek of old Aunt Mandy, the housekeeper, and
shook Uncle Peter’s hand.

“Keep out of deep water, honey lam’ chile,” cautioned Mandy, the tears
running down her cheeks fast. “And may de good Lord hol’ you in de
holler of his hand safe from de fury of tempest, and leviathan, and—and
cramps when you’s in swimmin’.”

“Amen, praise de Lord, oh, mah soul,” added Uncle Peter, fervently, and
Polly went out into the garden, with her own lashes wet with tears, for
they had been kind to her ever since she could remember toddling to
Mandy after raisins and sticks of cinnamon.

As Polly left the kitchen, she saw the other girls coming up the broad
walk from the gates, with suitcases, wraps and parasols, for the morning
was a still, close one, and the latent heat of the day seemed to lie
about the horizon in a golden haze.

The motor launch was waiting for them when they reached the landing. A
sailor in white duck, with the name _Hippocampus_ in gold letters on his
cap, stood on the little dock, and the Admiral assisted them on board.

“’Deed, Marse Bob,” Aunty Welcome protested, as she hesitated to take
the step into the launch. “’Deed, I know I’ll swamp you, I know it. I
don’t trust dat lil toy boat no more’n I would a tea tray. Nevah see
sech a shiny lil baby boat in mah life. Well, for mercy sakes, if I
ain’t in it all safe.”

And she laughed till Polly warned her she would surely burst the
equator, as she settled down in the stern of the little launch, and they
left the landing for the open river.

The girls said very little. With flushed cheeks, and eager, sparkling
eyes they were too much engaged in watching all the new sights that
unfolded as the launch sped along. On one side were the hills of
Virginia, gray green in the morning light like grass with the dew on it.
Dense patches of wild rice glimmered through the morning haze to the
left. About a mile down the river lay the _Hippocampus_, spotless and
silent, like a water lily on the river’s surface. None of the girls had
ever been on a steam yacht before. They watched this one with eager
interest as they drew nearer and nearer to it. Everything on board was
quiet. A gaily striped awning was spread up forward. The pennon of the
Chesapeake Yacht Club, of which the Senator was a member, fluttered
lightly from the mast head, in the gentle breeze. As the launch came
alongside, the Senator himself, in white flannels, appeared on deck, and
greeted them warmly.

“I thought you always had to climb a ladder of rope, when you went over
a ship’s side,” whispered Sue to Polly, as she saw the neat gangway of
steps that led easily from the launch to the deck of the yacht. “This is
much better, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is,” smiled back Polly, holding to her cap, as the wind blew
freshly up the river from the bay. “Did you notice the figure-head?”

It was turned fairly to them, so they had a good view of the prow with
its figure-head, a great golden sea-horse, curving proudly up from the
waves.

“But its head looks like a dragon’s instead of a horse’s. I wonder how
they travel through the water?” asked Ted.

“Just as easily as a jelly fish,” laughed Polly. “They don’t seem to
help themselves at all, just go along with their heads held up high, as
if they thought they owned the whole ocean. And they are such tiny
things, that it seems comical. Think if a sea horse and a sea cow were
to get into a quarrel. A sea cow could eat a peck of sea horses at one
gulp, and then ask for some dessert.” And Polly added on the spur of the
moment:

                “Whenever you see
                  A Manitee,
              A Hippocampus said to me.
                Be sure and treat,
                  Her awful sweet,
              Or she’ll gobble you up, from head to feet.”

Polly repeated the lines sedately, but her eyes were brimful of fun, as
she stepped from the launch, and followed Ruth up the brass railed
gangway. The latter had rubber-padded steps to prevent feet slipping.

It took the united efforts of the Admiral and two sailors to get Aunty
Welcome up that narrow flight, but they succeeded. Mrs. Yates was
awaiting their coming, forward beneath the awning.

“I am so very, very glad to have you with us,” she said cordially, as
she clasped each girl’s hand in hers, and smiled at their happy faces.
“Both the Senator and myself feel indebted to you all for consenting to
be our guests as far as Maine. This is Aunty Welcome, isn’t it?” She
turned to a broad-shouldered lad beside her. “Marbury, won’t you take
Aunty into the cabin and introduce her to Dido, so that she will feel at
home?”

Marbury obeyed, willingly, for under the united fire of seven pairs of
eyes, he began to feel somewhat uneasy. In the door of the forward cabin
stood the stewardess, Dido, bowing and smiling broadly, in her snowy
dress of white linen, with a white cap on her head, and Aunty Welcome
was glad enough to find a kindred spirit.

A cabin boy carried the suitcases and various wraps away and the girls
seated themselves in the cosy wicker-chairs under the wide awning, and
tried to think it was not all a dream.

All about them lay the beautiful river, broadening out as it approached
Chesapeake Bay. To the east the water glittered like quicksilver under
the sun’s rays, and gulls darted back and forth with graceful, wide
spread wings. Sometimes they rested on the water and rocked lazily to
and fro like wild ducks. Standing on one leg on a stretch of marshy
land, where the wild rice grew thickly, a sleepy crane watched them
weigh anchor. The yacht hardly made any more effort about it than the
little motor launch had, and before the girls realized they had started,
they heard the signal bells and felt the gentle vibration of the
engines.

Ruth touched Polly’s hand lightly with her own, as it lay on the arm of
her chair. Her face was turned seaward, and her chin was uplifted, as if
she were drinking in the delicious air. There was a faint glow in her
cheeks, and a smile on her lips.

Tony, the cabin boy, came back, and deftly spread a square of snowy
linen on the green wicker table, then returned, bearing a huge tray
laden with iced chocolate, strawberries served on crisp lettuce-leaves
like eggs in a nest, buttered waffles, broiled fresh mackerel under a
silver cover, and lyonnaise potatoes.

“The Senator and Admiral will take their breakfast below together,” Mrs.
Yates said. “I thought perhaps you girls would enjoy it better on deck,
as the view down the river is beautiful at this hour of the morning.
Polly, you may serve in the Senator’s place, while I pour the
chocolate.”

That was a memorable morning for the girls. Polly said in her impulsive
way:

“Here we had expected to ‘rough it,’ as the boys say, camp out, and
learn how to sail boats, and do our own cooking on a deserted island,
and just look at this. I declare it’s enough to spoil us for the island
camp. Who would want to bother over sails and rudders, and jibs and
booms, and things, when you can manage the whole ship this way, just by
touching an electric button.”

“Where’s the button, Polly?” asked Crullers, dreamily. “I didn’t see any
button.”

“There are a whole row of them up in the pilot house,” Polly returned.
“I saw them as we came past. But still,” with a wave of loyalty towards
the unknown island and its yacht club, “I think I would rather have to
fight my way against the waves. It must be glorious to feel like that
gull over there, as if you had wide spread wings and were flying low
before a gale.”

“Just wait till Polly tries it,” laughed Mrs. Yates. “It sounds so much
easier than it really is. I remember my first yachting experience when I
was your age, Polly. My father bought a winter bungalow on the Carolina
coast, not far from Charleston, and it was my first winter in a warm
climate. I had three big brothers, and the dearest possession they owned
in common was a sailboat that they built themselves. I think they used
to call it a knockabout, and the name of it was the _Say When_.”

“Isn’t that a dear name for a boat?” cried Polly.

“We went out one day in it, and were running along with a beam wind on a
smooth sea, when all at once a puff of wind hit us, and before the boys
could start the sail, to jam her down, she was over on one side, and we
all scrambled up on the planking, to windward, and hung on until the
squall was over, when she righted herself, but we bailed out over thirty
buckets of salt water.”

“I hope we shan’t have any such accident at Lost Island,” said Polly.
“Won’t a yacht sink, Mrs. Yates?”

“I cannot answer that positively, but I hardly think one will. Its
canvas and the shape of the hull too, I believe, usually buoy it up;
while a heavy boat that carries machinery will sink quickly. By the way,
have you thought to bring any buoys or life preservers?”

“We have some water wings and life preservers that Mrs. Lee gave us, so
we shan’t sink when we’re learning to swim,” said Sue hopefully.

“And Aunt Milly says there is a life-saving station only a mile and a
half up the beach, and they have a coast-guard service that passes
within hail of us through the night. I think we’ll be safe.”

Mrs. Yates smiled at Polly’s assured tone.

“I should feel pretty confident myself with such protection close by,”
she said. “Still it is just as well for you to take precautions
yourself, in case of sudden danger. Go down to the station as soon as
you conveniently can, after you are settled, and watch them at their
drill.”

“You mean in giving first aid to the injured?” Ruth asked.

“Yes, and in learning how to behave in case of a boat’s capsizing, or if
one of you should fall overboard. You want to know how to act to help
yourselves. How many in the club can swim?”

Polly glanced around and took stock of her crew.

“Ted and Kate and myself.”

“I’ve only tried swimming in fresh water,” said Ted.

“You will find salt water easier. It is buoyant, and invigorating. But
don’t be venturesome or foolhardy in strange waters. Have you any idea
of taking up a course of summer study?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Ruth. “Every morning we shall have regular class work,
and I am teacher. I brought several books with me, Mrs. Yates, but do
you know, they all seem so far advanced for beginners. I mean, they take
it for granted that the reader knows all about shell life, and sea
flora, and they talk about it all so scientifically, arranging them in
groups, and using the Latin names. I wish I could find a book telling
the intimate family side of beach life. I’d like to be on real friendly
terms with every starfish and crab I meet, not just have a bowing
acquaintance, and say, ‘Ah, good morning, Monsieur Crustacean, are you a
king crab, or a hermit?’”

Everyone laughed, even Marbury, who had come on deck after breakfasting
below with his father and the Admiral. The girls had finished also, and
Mrs. Yates suggested that Marbury show them over the yacht.

“Come back to me when you have seen everything you care to,” she told
them before they left her, “and I will show you my sea-going library and
my collection of ocean treasures. I started them both years ago, when
Marbury was a baby, and we took our first ocean voyage. It may help you
in forming collections of your own, and in trying to classify them.”

Marbury and Polly led the way over the yacht. It was as large as the
revenue cutter they met coming up the bay, and quite as smart in its
white and gold hull, and clean-cut smoke-stack and rigging, outlined
against the cloudless sky. The forward cabin was the Senator’s special
domain. Walls, lockers, and chairs all were covered with buff leather,
and it was fitted with a broad center table, and desk, with wall
brackets supporting cabinets containing all manner of ocean curios. The
dining-room was next to it, although there was a smaller one below used
for breakfast by the Senator. The main cabin was a delight to the girls.
Ten staterooms opened off it, and they were not like the little, narrow
“cubby-holes” generally found on steamers. Daintily furnished little
rooms, with lounging chairs and couches of willow, covered with apple
green chintz sprayed with pink blossoms. Curtains of the same were
looped back from the white berths. Four of these rooms were given up to
the girls, and they “paired off” accordingly. Polly and Crullers took
one, Sue and Ted another, Isabel and Ruth a third, and Kate was all
alone in the fourth, as befitted the chaperon of the party.

“Polly,” asked Mrs. Yates, after dinner that evening, “didn’t I notice a
mandolin with your luggage?”

“Yes’m,” answered Polly, who in spite of her “nearly fifteen” years,
still clung to the old-fashioned mode of speaking to a person older than
herself. “We girls have a glee club of our own. Sue, and Ted, and Ruth,
and myself. Ruth plays the guitar, and the rest of us mandolins. I
thought it would be fun to take them along and play nights when we felt
lonely.”

“I hope you will feel lonely to-morrow night then,” Mrs. Yates replied,
smiling. “I won’t ask you to play to-night, for you must be tired, but
to-morrow evening we will have a concert. I dearly love the sound of
music on the water, and so does the Senator. We have a piano on board,
you know, and Marbury has his banjo, although I tell him it always makes
me think of the old riddle ‘what makes more noise than a pig going under
a gate?’ You know the answer.”

The girls laughed, all except Crullers, who puzzled and pondered over
the riddle all the rest of the evening. Crullers always pondered over
anything she could not see through. That night, when they had retired to
their berths, and only the light from the cabin shone in the stateroom
over the doorway, Polly heard a sleepy voice across the room say,

“Polly, I know. Two pigs!”

Polly sat upright in bed, and threw a pillow with telling force at the
figure in the other berth, but there was only a stifled giggle in
answer, and she cuddled down under the blanket, and fell asleep.




                               CHAPTER VI

                           THREE DAYS AT SEA


The three days out at sea passed all too quickly. The weather kept clear
and cool up the coast, and the nights were perfect. In spite of
Crullers’ unwillingness to rise early, the other girls were on deck at
sunrise the first morning, and were rewarded by an invitation to the
bridge with the Captain and Senator Yates. Polly made friends with the
Captain at once.

“His name is Captain Sandy Saunders,” she told the girls. “And he sailed
first of all from the Hebrides, he told me, when he was a bit of a
laddie.”

As Kate had remarked teasingly, Polly had a terrible weakness towards
panhandle names, just the same as Aunty Welcome, and this was really a
very interesting Captain.

“He looks quite a good deal like a moon fish,” said Ruth, thoughtfully,
the first time she had seen him. “They are found in West Indian waters,
girls, and look just like decapitated pirates, round, and pink-faced,
with little round mouths and round eyes, and a tuft of fin like hair on
top.”

“I don’t think that is one bit complimentary, Ruth,” Polly had declared,
indignantly. “My captain doesn’t look like a decapitated pirate.”

And yet the next time she glanced up at the pilot house, and saw the
captain standing beside the wheelsman, she had to smile. He wore a blue
coat, with brass buttons, tight to his neck, and a high white collar,
and white duck trousers, with a stripe up the sides. And his face was
round, and smooth shaven, and very sunburned, with round eyes, so blue
that they seemed like glass marbles. But before that first day was over,
Polly and he were firm friends and shipmates.

The Admiral did not rise until six o’clock. As he had remarked the night
before, he had watched the sun rise from nearly every body of salt water
on the globe, and now he was convinced that it could get up without his
help, and he needed his beauty sleep badly.

To the girls, it was a wonderful sight, that first sunrise. The clouds
turned to flakes of radiant gold and rose and violet, shot through and
through with silver lights. When the sun rose over the horizon line,
every wavelet caught its glory in miniature, and the whole wide sea
looked like “gloryland,” as Aunty Welcome said. Isabel leaned over the
rail at the stern, looking out at the widening wake of pearly foam, that
glittered and sparkled like countless diamonds in the sunshine.

“I wonder whether that isn’t what makes the pink tint inside sea
shells,” she said musingly to Kate. “Maybe they caught some of the color
and imprisoned it.”

Polly came hurrying along deck, her cheeks aglow, her cap on the back of
her head, and hands deep in her reefer pockets, for the early mornings
were cool.

“Girls, there’s a school of porpoises moving off shore,” she called,
excitedly. “You can see them around the prow plainly.”

They hurried after her, and reached the extreme point of the prow,
beyond the neat coils of rope and the capstan.

Polly laughed over the latter.

“I used to call that the captain,” she said. “There was a song
grandfather sang to me, something about ‘We’ll heave the capstan round,
my boys,’ and I always said, ‘We’ll heave the captain round, my boys.’ I
remember he told me such things never happened on well-regulated ships.”

“Well, forevermore, girls,” exclaimed Sue, as she leaned over the prow,
until she could have reached down and touched the gilded crest of the
_Hippocampus_ itself. “There are a lot down there, and they’re going as
fast as we are!”

It was strange to watch them. There seemed to be a dozen or more, about
three or four feet long, and as they played and frolicked in the leaping
spray from the cutwater, they would roll and toss and turn half over
like kittens. Underneath, their bodies were a deep shell-pink, and the
rest was brownish-green.

While they were watching them, Marbury came along deck holding something
in his hand.

“One of the sailors found it back there on the aft deck while he was
swabbing it just now,” he called. “It’s a flying fish.”

The girls examined it with eager interest, pulling out the delicate,
bat-like wings that folded close to its sides, just like a junk boat’s
sails, as Polly said. Then they had the fun of letting it go over the
side of the boat, and it sank out of sight.

“But it’s half dead now,” said Marbury. “There’s not much use in putting
it back.”

“Yes, there is,” answered Polly, cheerfully. “It will have the fun of
telling all the other fish its wonderful adventure, and will die happy.
I can see a ridge of land way off there to the west, can’t you?”

“Barnegat, and the Jersey coast, I think,” Marbury told her. “There’s
bully yachting all along there, on account of the inlets. I camped out
near Cape May one summer with a crowd of boys from the naval ‘Prep.,’
and we had fine fishing and sailing. The beaches are long and shallow.
Up in Maine you’ll find them short with plenty of rocks.”

“Short around where the rocks are, you mean,” said Ruth. “There are
long, flat reaches of sand up there, too.”

“Anyway, we like rocks,” put in Polly, comfortably. “I don’t think a
long, shallow beach is good for yachting. Where are you at low tide? Up
in the sand somewhere. And where are you at high tide? Swamped.”

Marbury laughed at her, heartily. He was a tall, stalwart naval cadet of
nineteen, with the Senator’s own merry eyes and quick gift of
understanding.

“That makes me think of one of father’s stories,” he said. “Uncle Joe,
an old darkey down home, used to say he’d a heap rather be killed on
land than on water, ‘’case if dey’s an accident on land, why, dar you
is, and if dey’s a blow-up in de middle ob de ocean, whar is you?’”

“I don’t care,” persisted Polly, even while she laughed at the story
with the others. “Most people are afraid of rocks when they’re boating,
but rocks won’t hurt you if you know how to manage them. I’d rather have
rocks along shore with some water around them, deep enough to let a
three-foot draft boat slip in, than half a mile of wet sand to climb
over after you’ve anchored.”

“You won’t get any three-foot draft on a catboat unless your
centerboard’s down,” Ted said. “I know because I’ve heard my brothers
tell about theirs. It hasn’t any more keel than a washbowl. I like a
‘cat’ myself, because you jam her down against the wind, and lie back
and rest. In a yawl or knockabout, you have to change around, and shift
about, and fuss every time you tack. I don’t think that’s any fun.”

Polly’s brown eyes sparkled, and she stuck her hands deep in her reefer
pockets, and looked out at the wide ocean as if she wanted to clasp
hands with it.

“I do,” she said. “I’d like to have a boat that was nearly all sail, and
just me sitting on a plank. I love to feel the wind in my face, and
reach out to it. A catboat’s a regular tub.”

“No, it isn’t, Polly, truly,” Ted protested. “There’s a picture in my
Tennyson of the passing of Arthur, and the three queens came after him
in a catboat. You can tell it is just a catboat by looking at it.”

Everyone laughed, but Ted stood her ground sturdily.

“Not a catboat, goose,” explained Ruth, merrily. “It must have been a
‘shallop flitting, silken sailed, skimming down to Camelot.’”

“There,” cried Sue. “I’ve been wanting a boat all along, that would be
different from those the other girls sail, and now I have it. My boat
shall be the only unique one in the yacht club. I shall get me a
shallop.”

They trooped in to breakfast with rosy cheeks and laughing lips. Mrs.
Yates was awaiting them. The Admiral and she were talking over old
Virginia days, and the girls were glad to listen to some of those tales
of long ago, while they partook of deliciously-fried scallops, crisp
bacon on toast triangles, corn fritters, and fried sweet potatoes,
served as only the Senator’s plantation cook could serve them.

After breakfast, Ruth said that Kate and she were going into the cabin
to study Mrs. Yates’s sea library and collections.

“We’ll all go,” proclaimed Polly at once. “It will never do to let these
two know so much more than the rest of us.”

So all the forenoon they pored over the pressed seaweed folios,
excepting the hour for morning service, when the Senator called all
hands into the cabin and read the dear, familiar words they all loved.

After dinner they went back to the collections and the library, and this
time Mrs. Yates herself joined them, and explained many things they did
not know about. Besides the seaweed folios, there were glass cases
hanging against the walls, containing shells and all manner of sea
curiosities. Ruth was in her element. With her eyeglasses clipped firmly
in place on her nose, she traced the pedigree of the rarest specimens,
and told the other girls all about sea urchins, Japanese trumpet shells,
chambered nautili, and jellyfish, that Mrs. Yates called the
phosphorescent mushrooms of the sea.

“Just wait till we reach our island,” Ruth told the rest. “Every morning
early I shall hunt along the beach and in the enchanted gardens the tide
leaves in the rock hollows, and I shall get results.”

“What sort of shells are those, Ruth?” asked Crullers, in her slow
sleepy way. “I don’t remember hearing about them.”

“Results, Crullers, results,” repeated Ruth, patiently, but forcibly.
“The effects of a cause. The shells and things left by the tide. Then
after we have classified, and studied them, we’ll arrange them for
preservation. Which tint would the sea weed look best against, Polly? I
brought brown cards and gray and green, for mounting.”

“Brown,” Polly told her, “biscuit brown. Don’t you know what beautiful
colors the seaweed dries to, purples, and lavenders, and deep maroons,
and woodsy browns. Save your green boards for ferns, and shore flowers,
and your gray ones for the mosses and lichens.”

“And, by the way, Polly,” added Mrs. Yates, “here is a hint that may
prove useful. Don’t use any glue or mucilage to fasten your seaweed or
other vegetation to the boards. Marbury has some fine wire brads that
answer the purpose admirably. They are sharp and flexible, and nearly
invisible after they are fastened to the boards, and your specimens are
held securely in place.”

“That’s a splendid idea, Mrs. Yates,” cried Kate and Polly in one
breath. “We wondered how we could fasten them.”

“What is the best way to preserve shells, Mrs. Yates?” asked Ruth,
eagerly, leaning her chin on her two palms, and bending forward.

“Well, that depends on the size. Your large ones must be packed
separately—”

“But we shan’t find very large ones along our coast, shall we?”

“Indeed, you will, especially along the Maine shore. Even the large
periwinkles, that are pink and brown mottled, are too large to put in
bottles. You will find as I did, that the easiest and simplest way to
dispose of shells is to make things out of them during the summer. It
passes the time, and is very enjoyable. Have you seen the portìere that
hangs between my stateroom and Marbury’s? It is made entirely of shells,
strung on silken cords. Marbury collected the shells and I made it one
summer when we took a cottage near Greenwich, Conn. There is a dearth of
dainty shells along the Long Island Sound shore, but these are very
pretty, and are so soft that you can pierce them easily with a needle. I
don’t remember their name, but Marbury used to call them in fun,
Neptune’s finger-nails.”

The girls wanted to see the portìere at once, and they followed Mrs.
Yates along the cabin to her own special quarters, a cool, commodious
stateroom that was her very own, as Polly said. Next to it on one side
slept Marbury, and on the other was the Senator’s apartment. The
portìere of shells was exquisite, the girls agreed. The shells were
hardly larger than finger-nails, in fact, and as delicate, and
translucent as sea foam. Some were palest pink, and others clear amber,
and still others were a faint pearl, or vivid green.

“It makes me think of those funny wind harps that the Chinese use to
scare away evil spirits,” said Kate. “Listen how the shells tinkle when
the wind sways them to and fro. I’d love to carry one back to Miss
Calvert, girls, as our summer gift.”

“We’ll do it,” said Polly at once, “if there are any of these shells at
Lost Island. Mrs. Yates, what is this stretched over your walls,
please?”

“Just everyday fish net,” answered Mrs. Yates, smiling as Polly and the
rest examined the tightly stretched, dark green net that covered the
stateroom walls, taut and snug. “It was Marbury’s idea. He told me the
boys at the naval academy used it on their walls when they camped out,
to hang specimens on, or any odds and ends. I wanted something that
would not deface the woodwork, and Marbury put it up for me. It is very
handy to slip pictures in, or ornaments of any kind.”

“It would make good window curtains too,” said Kate. “Perhaps we may be
able to get some from the fishermen, Polly. It would come in handy
somewhere, and if we didn’t do anything else with it we might even use
it to catch fish in.”

The next day Marbury showed them his lines and fishing tackle, and gave
them general hints on the gentle art of landing cod and mackerel and
other fish.

“And what about lobsters?” asked Crullers. “I like lobster all cooked up
in cream the way Polly makes it in the chafing dish. How can we catch
them?”

“Here you are, Crullers,” called Ruth, from the other end of the cabin.
“You sit down here, and read all about it. I have just finished, and I
feel as though I could set any lobster pot along the coast, now.”

That evening was the last they were to spend on the yacht. It was Monday
night, and the captain promised that if all went well they should waken
in harbor the following morning. So after dinner they gathered in the
cabin, and Mrs. Yates played for them on the piano, while out in the
moonlight the Admiral paced the deck with the Senator, and put his head
inside the door every now and then to suggest some favorite.

“Isn’t it queer, Polly?” Isabel said softly, as she watched them, the
Senator in his white flannels and Mrs. Yates all in white too, with her
soft, fair hair worn in a single coronet braid about her head. “Isn’t it
queer that the nicest people are always the simplest in their ways, and
the most unaffected. It’s only the others—”

“The nobodies,” assented Polly, quickly, nodding her head. “I know just
what you mean. They act as if they had swallowed a pound of starch.
Grandfather told me that Mrs. Yates was the only daughter of the old
Arnold family, in Washington. He said he remembered walking one day
along the street, and meeting three  nurses in a solemn
procession. There was one to carry a parasol over the oldest one, and
another to carry the baby’s wraps, and finally the baby herself in the
arms of the chief mammy. Just think of it. And that was Mrs. Yates when
she was Peggie Arnold.”

“Mrs. Yates,” came the Admiral’s round tones from the doorway, “do you
happen to know ‘Billy was a Bo’sun’?”

In answer Mrs. Yates’s fingers ran off a little prelude, and she sang,
while all the girls clustered around the piano to listen to the brand
new song:

                “Oh, Billy was a bo’sun, bold and brave,
                  William was a gay young sailor,
                Sailed upon the south sea wave.
                  Oh, William was a gay young tar.
                His ship was called the “Mary Ann,”
                  William was a sailor,
                And down the African coast she ran,
                  For gold and i-vor-ee!
                  For gold and i-vor-ee!
                Oh, Billy was a bo’sun, bold and brave,
                  William was a gay young sailor,
                Sailed upon the south sea wave,
                  William, he was a gay young tar.”

“That’s the one,” applauded the Admiral, gaily. “I sang that chanty
before now in a fo’cas’le on a trading ship bound for the Straits, when
I wasn’t much older than Polly there.”

“Mother knows all the sailor songs and fisherman croons of the seven
seas,” said Marbury, as he leaned towards his mother, turning pages when
she needed help. “I’ve kept count to-night, and in the last half hour
she has skipped from an Iceland lullaby to a Greek rowing chorus we boys
used to sing when we were at shell practice on the bay. Then that
rippling one was a gondolier song we heard at Venice, way out on one of
the small canals around the islands. And just before this last, Mother,
wasn’t that the little lullaby you heard at Iona?”

“This?” Mrs. Yates ran over the simple, soft melody, and Polly caught
the words.

    “Day has barred her windows close, and gaes wi’ quiet feet,
    Night wrapped in a cloak of gray, comes saftly doon the street,
    Mither’s heart’s a guiding star, tender, strong, and true,
      Lullaby, and lulla-loo-oo—
        Sleep, lammie, noo, sleep, lammie, noo.”

“Oh, that’s a darling,” cried Polly. “Please, please, sing some more.”

“We’re going out on deck, now,” said Mrs. Yates, rising, with one arm
around Polly. “The moon is rising, and I want to hear the Polly Page
Glee Club this last night we will be together.”

“If a mere banjo player may join in too,” suggested Marbury, his eyes
twinkling with fun, “we’ll show the sharks and mermaids what real talent
can do.”

The girls often looked back on that evening. It seemed almost too happy
and perfect to be quite real, Polly said. The night was wonderfully calm
and clear, a night when all the stars looked nearer than usual, Sue
declared.

Even the Admiral’s rolling basso was frequently heard, and the Senator
hummed contentedly, when they happened to strike a special favorite of
his. All the old college songs and heart-throb tunes that are handed
down over cradles of nations were touched up by the glee club that
night, and last of all, Polly’s clear soprano started up the Admiral’s
favorite, “Tom Bowling.”

“Just leave that one to the echoes,” he said, as the sweetly-plaintive
old melody died away on the still night air. “And now, to your bunks,
every girl Jack of you, for you’ll wake up to-morrow with Maine under
your noses, and Lost Island to shake hands with before breakfast.”




                              CHAPTER VII

                         LANDING AT LOST ISLAND


“Polly! Polly!” came a sleepy, anxious call from Crullers’ berth the
next morning, and Polly sat up drowsily. It was still dark in their
stateroom, but between the narrow shutters at the window, there stole a
gray gleam of dawn. Polly sprang out of bed, and let down the shutter.
And she half smiled as she did so, remembering how the first morning
Crullers had tried to do so, and had started to cry because she had let
the shutter fall down the side of the boat. Everything on the yacht was
silent. The engines had stopped. There was no throbbing, no vibration,
nothing, except stillness. Even to Polly’s practical mind there came a
vague sense of danger, as she looked out of the window. Then she
laughed.

Crullers was already out of bed, a blanket wrapped around her, as she
dropped on her knees and peered under the berth.

“What are you doing?” asked Polly.

“Looking for the life preservers,” came back Crullers’ half-smothered
tones. “Are we wrecked, Polly? Oh, I wish I had stayed at home.”

“Oh, do get up from there, goose,” Polly laughed. “We are on the coast
of Maine, that’s all. Hurry up and get dressed. It’s half-past three.
Let’s go out on deck and watch the sunrise.”

“Oh, Polly, I’m so sleepy,” pleaded poor Crullers. “If it isn’t a wreck,
I’m going back to bed.”

“Indeed, you’re not,” cried Polly, as she brushed out her heavy curls
vigorously. “I’ll throw pillows at you if you dare to try it. If I had a
clothespin handy, I’d stick it on your nose. Oh, Crullers, that makes me
think of something funny. Now listen, for it may wake you up. Stoney was
bound he’d sleep mornings, and Aunty Welcome marched upstairs one day
and stuck a clothespin on his nose, sure enough. She says it’s the
greatest discourager of sleepiness she knows of, and Stoney got up fast
enough after that at first call.”

“It’s awfully cold, isn’t it?” shivered Crullers, groping around after
her stockings. Polly turned on the electric light overhead.

“Cold? The second of July. Fiddlesticks!” She put her head out of the
little, narrow window, trying to discern the shore outline. “I can’t see
anything but dark, hilly-looking bumps. We’re in a bay. There’s a big
light way off over there, blinking. It’s a lighthouse.”

There came a light tap on the door.

“Who is it?” asked Polly. “We’re up.”

“It’s me,” said Sue, intimately, but without regard for grammar. “I’m so
glad you’re awake, Polly. Ted and I got up as soon as we heard them
dropping anchor. Oh, it’s glorious. The sunrise is just breaking through
the clouds, and the tide’s way out, and we’re in a big bay, Polly, with
a lot of little islands scattered around, as if some giant boy had been
throwing giant pebbles. We just saw a lot of fishing smacks go by on
their way out to the banks.”

Ten minutes later the four stood on deck. Marbury was the only one there
to greet them, except Captain Sandy Saunders and one lone sailor. It was
quarter of four.

“We got in earlier than grandfather expected,” said Polly after the
good-mornings had all been said. “Just look at all those islands. How
will we know which is Lost Island among so many?”

“You don’t call every rock with a clump of pines hanging to it, an
island, do you?” Marbury asked, teasingly. “I don’t know which one of
those is your island, but I think it must be larger than these dots of
land. Do you see that inlet in the main shore over east? The mate tells
me that the village lies around there, about quarter of a mile up the
river. Eastport is the name of it. All along the north shore of the bay
are summer cottages, and that big building where you can see lights is
the hotel. It stands between two bluffs. That other large building with
the two rows of verandas is the Orienta Yacht Club. Father says he knows
the commodore of it, Mr. Millard.”

“I don’t see how you found out so much about it, while we have been
asleep,” said Polly.

“Don’t you?” Marbury’s eyes were full of mirth, as he turned to her. “I
don’t know whether I had better tell you or not, but I will. Our mate’s
home is at Eastport, and he told me all about the place.”

“Doesn’t he want to go home for a little visit while you are at anchor?”
asked Sue, quickly.

“I don’t know. There will hardly be time, for we’re to sail as soon as
we put you ashore and find you are safely located. Perhaps he’ll send a
message by you.”

Nobody but Sue thought any more about it, for the Admiral appeared on
deck just as the rim of the sun appeared above the horizon.

“Good-morning, everybody,” he called, in his deep, cheery tones. “God
bless us all, what a morning this is! Wind’s due south, isn’t it, Cap’n?
Bears the fragrance of a thousand shores and sea-girt flowering isles
upon it.”

“Grandfather, you’re getting as poetical as Isabel. She has been
declaiming, ‘Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul,’ ever since
we first called her, and she isn’t all dressed yet. If you didn’t have
me to stand by you for a good shipmate, you’d be the most rollicking old
tar that ever trod a deck.”

“I declare, Polly, I’ll appeal to Mrs. Yates the instant she appears,”
quoth the Admiral, laughing. “I am dignity itself.”

Polly slipped her arms around his neck, and kissed him, her brown eyes
brimful of mischief, and they went over to where Captain Saunders stood.

“It’s four thirty-five now,” he said. “Breakfast for all hands at five
are the Senator’s orders, and ashore at six.”

“Are we to go direct to the island?” asked Polly.

“No,” the Admiral spoke up. “I have talked it over with Mrs. Yates, and
she agrees with me it would be better for you girls to put up at the
hotel first, until you find out how the land lies. I always had my
doubts about Robinson Crusoe’s comfort, and I want you to be situated
comfortably, before I leave you.”

“I thought you were going to remain up here right along, sir?” said
Marbury.

“Not exactly. This yacht club opens for a couple of months, and I cannot
put in all that time with the rocking chair fleet over yonder on the
veranda of the hotel or boat club, can I? I shall stay around within
hail, until they get their bearings, and are fairly on their course,
then I am going South until the regatta in August.”

“Who is that man over yonder?” asked Sue suddenly. She had been far up
in her favorite seat in the prow, as close to the _Hippocampus_ as she
could get, watching the outline of the shore shape itself clearly from
the shadows. A dory was just coming in from the channel that led to the
open sea, with one man in it, and a lot of lanterns for cargo.

“One of the men from the station,” Captain Saunders explained. “You can
see the lighthouse out on the Point yonder, can’t you? Those buildings
at its base are where the light-tender lives, and farther along shore
you can see the roof of another building, with a tall spar on it. That’s
the life-saving station. Every night and morning one of the men goes out
to hang the signal lights on the piling that marks the channel to the
inlet yonder. It’s a narrow passage, and there’s a bad ledge of rock off
to the southeast. That arm of land to the south they call the Sickle.”

He pointed to the stretch of shore that extended from the mainland for
several miles, and curved around Eagle Bay like a half moon.

“Why didn’t they call it the Crescent?” asked Isabel, meditatively.
“It’s so much more expressive.”

“So is Sickle,” laughed Polly, waving her handkerchief towards the dory.
“Maybe this one gathers in the harvest of the sea.”

“Polly, don’t do that,” exclaimed Ruth. “They’ll see you.”

“I hope they do,” responded Polly, delightedly. “I wasn’t waving at the
boat, goosie. There,” as one figure in the dory lifted an oar in salute
to her, and waved his cap. “I’ve made one friend, anyway, on this
foreign coast of Barbaree.”

The breakfast gong struck. It was one other thing in the daily life
aboard the _Hippocampus_ that pleased the girls. At each meal the
steward would strike a musical Chinese gong with two muffled sticks, and
the sweet, vibrating chimes would sound clearly through the cabin.

“When we get settled in our club house,” Polly said, as they started for
the dining-room, “we’ll have one of those gongs if I have to make it
myself.”

“Polly, do you realize,” said Isabel, regretfully, “that after all this
splendor we are going bang on a desert isle?”

“‘Quoth the Raven, Nevermore,’” Polly said in a deep, mournful tone that
matched Isabel’s exactly, and made them all laugh.

“Not that I mind it,” added Isabel, hastily. “I expect Polly’ll have us
all in sou’westers and oilskins before we get through, patrolling the
beach with the life-guard. I wish I could swim. Is it hard learning,
Senator Yates?”

“Not very.” The Senator’s face wore a reminiscent smile. “I was about
seven when I learned. Tad Newell was my chum those days. He was my
cousin, and about twelve years old, and he could swim like a tommycod.
So he undertook to teach me. We went down to the old swimming hole on
Tad’s place, and I took off my clothes, while Tad tied a rope around my
waist. ‘Now, all you need do, Charlie, is to let yourself go,’ he told
me, ‘and I’ll hang on to the rope till you learn to swim.’ So I jumped
from a rock into the water, and let myself go, but that rope parted. Tad
yelled to me to strike out and tread water. I did as I was told, and the
first thing I knew I was swimming around the old pond all right. ‘Golly
Ann,’ Tad called out, ‘I’ll bet a cookie if that old rope hadn’t given
way, you’d have been trailing around here on the end of it for an
hour.’”

“We’ll remember that story, and provide good, strong ropes,” Polly said,
laughing. “Crullers declares she will put on a life preserver, but I
like the water wings the best. I do hope we may be able to see the
island to-day, and the bungalow, or club-house, or shack, whichever it
is. Ruth brought a flag along to raise as soon as we land, and our own
yacht club pennant, golden sun on a sea of blue.”

By six the girls were through their breakfast, and ready to go ashore.
Marbury stayed with his mother, but the Senator went with them as far as
the hotel landing. Another trip brought their camp kit and suitcases,
and finally, about nine, they all stood on the broad veranda of the
shore hotel, waving handkerchiefs in farewell to the Yates family, as
the _Hippocampus_ left the little bay and steamed out beyond the point
of the Sickle, on her way up to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward’s Island.

“But they’re certain to stop and see us on their way back the end of
August,” Polly said cheerily. “We’ve had a fine trip, and I think it was
mighty lucky we had it at all. So now it’s over, let’s not sit down and
weep. Isabel’s wiping her eyes now. Face about the other way and be
happy. Where’s grandfather?”

Down at the far end of the veranda he sat in a comfortable armchair,
chatting with another elderly gentleman.

“He has joined the rocking-chair fleet so soon,” Kate exclaimed. “And
Aunty Welcome’s upstairs telling the chambermaids all about Virginia.
Let’s go and find the captain who knows all about the island and the
yachts.”

“But we don’t even know his name,” said Isabel.

“We shall, though, soon,” Polly replied. Her eyes were bright with
excitement. “I am going to ask everyone I meet, very nicely, if they can
direct me to the captain, and you see if we don’t find him.”

Up the boardwalk they started, going towards the village. The hotel was
a low, two-storied frame building, with broad verandas around it, and
tall, rocky bluffs on either side. Behind it, through a break in the
bluffs, could be caught a glimpse of hills, blending one into the other,
and rising higher and higher against the skyline, until they seemed to
become a part of the clouds themselves.

The crescent-shaped shore was rocky also. Before the hotel was a long
stretch of smooth beach, and the island shores looked sandy from a
distance, but for the rest, rocks seemed to predominate. Not the smooth,
shelving sandstone the girls were used to seeing, but great, rough
masses of brownish green, that appeared to have the hardness and weight
of iron slag.

“Just look at that group way out yonder in the bay,” Ruth exclaimed.
“Aren’t they like a herd of hippopotami under water? I expect to see
them rise up, and start away any minute. And, see, girls, every single
one of those islands has trees on it. I wonder which is Lost Island?”

“Seems to me,” said Isabel, critically, “that a sandy beach would be
much better for our sailing, than those rocks. Suppose we bump into
them.”

“Don’t worry, Dame Isabel,” Polly slipped her arm around her, happily.
“If we bump into them, we’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing
they didn’t bump into us, won’t we? Here cometh a native of this wild
and rocky shore, mates. I think he’s Boy Friday.”

Swinging leisurely along the beach was a tall, long-legged,
stoop-shouldered boy of fifteen years or so. He wore overalls, turned up
around his bare legs, and a huge straw hat hid his face in shadow. Sue
declared that he resembled the crane they had seen away back in the wild
rice-fields along the Potomac. But he was a friendly-looking native, at
all events, and he carried a pail of freshly-dug clams, and over one
shoulder a hoe with a broken handle.

“Don’t scare him, girls,” cautioned Polly; but she had scarcely spoken
before the boy waved the hoe at them in a neighborly salute, and sent
out a hail.

“Hello!”

“Hello!” shouted back Polly and Sue, but the more sedate members of the
club waited until he caught up with them before delivering any greeting.

“I saw you come ashore this morning,” he said, smiling at them frankly.
“I was out with father taking in the lights, and we saw somebody wave at
us from the yacht—”

“I did,” smiled Polly.

“Did you? I waved back. And father said he guessed you must be the folks
we was looking for, so I’d better stop over at the hotel this morning on
my way back, but I went clamming first. Got some whoppers too, regular
quahaugs.”

He held out the pail for their admiration, and the girls duly admired,
but it was not with the thought for those particular clams. As Kate said
afterwards: “I thought right away that if he could get them, so could
we, and what dandy clam frys we’d have in the dear old chafing-dish.”

Polly looked at him steadily for a minute more before she hazarded a
guess.

“Is your father the captain?”

The boy nodded, smiling until his mouth looked like the Cheshire cat’s.

“Yes’m. Cap’n Ben Carey, formerly of the schooner _Mary_, now on duty at
the station down yonder on the Point. They call our end of the bay Fair
Havens. It’s in the Bible, too.”

“Is it?” Polly and the others were now interested fully. Even Marbury,
with all his cadet training back of him, had been somewhat shy with all
seven girls around him, plying him with questions, but this boy was not.

“What’s your own name?” asked Sue.

“Tom Carey.”

“Can you sail a yacht all by yourself?”

“I can sail anything,” answered the clam digger, modestly.

“The captain is in charge of Lost Island, isn’t he?” Polly inquired. “I
am Polly Page, Mrs. Holmes’s niece.”

Tom nodded, and put out his hand.

“I know. We’ve been looking for you any time. We’ve got five of the
Holmes boys’ boats down at our place. Father got a letter from London
telling him you was coming, and he gave me the stamp to keep. Going to
look at the place this morning?”

“We want to go over as soon as we may,” Polly said. “How far is it?”

Tom pointed to the opposite shore of the bay, about midway between the
Point and the hotel.

“It’s right over yonder, where the beach looks flat all to once, then it
hunches up into a big knob of land. It isn’t a whole island. There’s a
ridge of land joins it on the main shore. It’s a good beach for sail
boats. There’s five of them all together, and father’s got a lot more.
He rents them for the season to the cottage folks along shore. He owns a
sloop, too, and he lets that out to folks who want to sail clear out to
the banks and fish. And Nancy has her own boat too.”

“Who is Nancy?” asked Ted.

“My sister,” Tom’s head lifted a trifle higher than ordinary, as he said
it. It was easy to see the estimation he had of Nancy. “They’ve got a
junior yacht club over at the Orienta, and not one in the lot can sail
as well as Nancy. Look over there.”

Around the shore at the inlet came a trim catboat, tacking and beating
down across the bay as a puff of wind hit her as easily as a gull
swerves from its course.

“That’s Nancy,” Tom said proudly. “She’s been over to the village, most
likely, for mother. She don’t like the walk around the shore road. Guess
she’s bringing back something from my aunt’s.”

“How old is she?” Isabel’s tone was quite respectful, as she watched the
single figure in the boat, just a mere dark speck, half hidden by the
sail.

“Thirteen. I’m going on sixteen. We look after things at Fair Havens
while father’s on duty down at the Point.”

“Is he a real life-saver?” asked Polly, eagerly.

“Yes,” said Tom, simply, adding, “He’s got some medals. He’s a coast
guardsman. Do you want to go over to your place right now? I’m going
along home, and it’s only a step from there.”

Polly considered. It was nearly noon, but they all wanted to see Lost
Island so very much that she knew they would not mind giving up their
luncheon at the hotel for the trip.

“Have you got a boat that will carry us all?” she asked, doubtfully.

“We won’t need a boat. I said they only called it an island, didn’t I?
It isn’t a whole one. It’s a sort of knob that sticks up out of the
water, with a good bit of beach, and at high tide it’s pretty well
surrounded, except for a ridge of hummocks you can walk over. If we
follow this shore road, it leads right to our house, and your place, and
then straight along and minds its own business till it gets out to the
Point.”

“Then we’ll be neighbors, won’t we?” said Ruth. “I guess we’ll be very
glad to have good ones within hail before we get through.”

“We’ll all be good neighbors to you,” Tom returned quite seriously.
“We’re mighty glad some real folks are going to live near us all summer.
It gets lonesome way out there on the bay shore, and the village is two
miles away. It’s just exactly one mile from our house to the hotel, then
another mile on to Eastport.”

“Do you walk it often?” asked Ted, her hands deep in her sweater
pockets. “We’ll have to go over after our mail, and I’m going to be post
girl. I love to walk, miles.”

“We don’t walk it much,” returned Tom, stolidly. “You won’t either,
after you find you can clip across the bay in a ‘cat’ in quarter the
time.”

They had turned about, and were walking slowly back along the boardwalk
towards the hotel. The Admiral saw them coming, and came down from the
veranda to meet them. Polly managed the introduction in her own way.

“Grandfather, dear, this is Tom Carey, the captain’s son. He knows all
about the island, and takes care of the yachts for his father. And may
we, please, please, walk right over, and see it all now?”

The Admiral referred the question to his watch. Polly loved that watch.
It was really an old friend of the family. It was a thin watch, of old
gold, with a dull gold face, and black hands and figures on it, and more
than that, it struck the hours, in a queer, high-pitched little ring.

“Eleven thirty-five it is, Polly. Will you be back by one sharp?”

“Yes, sir,” promised Polly, and off they went, Indian file, along the
two-plank walk, with the tall, awkward figure in overalls leading.

“Seems to be an able seaman,” commented the Admiral, comfortably to
himself, as he went back to his easy chair and the budget of mail that
awaited him, and if Tom could only have heard him, he could not have
asked for higher praise.

The Admiral’s opinion was verified by the girls before half an hour had
passed. In that brief time, Tom had subdued even Polly with the breadth
and depth and height of his knowledge of boats and sailor craft. One
mile from the hotel they came to the Carey house. There was a good-sized
boat dock, with a dozen or more sail boats moored alongside, and several
row boats. A large signboard nailed up on crossbeams notified the
passing world that it had reached the port of “Fair Havens.” A boardwalk
led up from the dock over the beach to the house. It made the girls
think of a house built of cards that first time they saw it. Not but
what it was solid enough, but it seemed to be in sections, and one part
leaned comfortably over for support on all the other adjacent parts.
Once upon a time it had been painted red, but wind and storms and the
drifting, beating sand had scraped off nearly every vestige of paint,
and left the boards smooth and clean as a freshly-scrubbed oak floor. On
the south side of the house around the kitchen door was a little garden
enclosed by a paling fence, and hollyhocks grew nearly to the eaves, in
tall, regular rows like grenadiers. A honeysuckle vine climbed over the
side wall, and there was the sweet fragrance of stocks and sweetbrier
over all, with sweet peas reaching out loving tendrils through the
palings.

“My sister takes care of our garden,” said Tom, proudly. “She can do
anything she sets her hand to. Mother says she’s just like Aunt Cynthy
over in Eastport. She tried to paint the fence white, but it didn’t
last. When winter comes, the sand just beats up here, and eats it off
clean. Don’t you want to stop in, and get acquainted?”

Indeed they did want to, Polly replied promptly, so up the plank walk
they went to the side door. Tom pointed out the arching framework above
it, and its crimson rambler.

“I nailed that portico up there,” he told them. “And Nancy transplanted
the rambler.”

“It’s ever so pretty,” the girls said heartily, and Tom picked some of
the sweet red roses for each of them. Inside the house some one was
singing, but when they tapped on the door it ceased, and Nancy herself
came to greet them. She was tall and tanned, this Maine shore girl, and
though she was only thirteen, her head topped Kate’s. Her long fair hair
was bound around her head in two braids, and her eyes were as frank and
as blue as Tom’s; as Polly said afterwards, her fair hair and blue eyes
looked out of place in contrast with her tanned arms and face. But they
saw at a glance that here was a neighbor worth having, and one to be
cultivated. Mrs. Carey welcomed them warmly. She was just Nancy grown
plumper and older, and she even wore her hair in the same way, two long
braids wound around her head like a wreath. Isabel tried to do hers up
that way the very next day, but gave it up.

While they talked of their summer plans, and Polly went down to the
landing with Nancy to look over the boats there, the girls watched Mrs.
Carey fry fish balls, and it was a ceremony. Not in any ordinary frying
pan did she fry them, but in a deep kettle, just as Aunty Welcome fried
doughnuts, and when the balls came out they were laid in a draining pan,
all cooked to a delicious golden brown, until your mouth watered just to
look at them.

“Don’t you girls want to sit right up to the table and have a bite
before you take the walk over to the Knob?” asked Mrs. Carey suddenly.
“You’ll be famished before you get back to the hotel. Of course you
will. Guess I knew all about girls and their appetites before you were
born. Nancy, you get some plates, and those fresh-baked biscuits covered
over on the bread board there, and I’ll get a bottle of my Chili sauce.
I wouldn’t give two cents for fish balls unless I could trim them up
with Chili sauce.”

Taste good? The girls hoped all along the road to Lost Island, after it
was over, that Mrs. Carey made fish balls often.

“Tom says she can make clam pies, too, girls,” Crullers said, eagerly.
Crullers was always radiant when the subject came up of feeding the
inner girl. “And clam chowder, and fritters, and Indian puddings.”

“What are Indian puddings?” asked Isabel.

“Hush,” warned Polly. “Don’t ask questions, Isabel. You make Indian
puddings out of cornmeal, and cream, and molasses, and spice. Anybody
knows that. Whenever I used to feel sad after Aunty Welcome had scolded
me, she’d always turn around and coax Mandy to make me an Indian pudding
just piled full of raisins. Oh, girls, look! There it is.”

She stopped short, and pointed ahead of them. They had come to a path
leading up over the rocks. The high-water mark could be plainly seen,
where the tide had left a little fringe of shells, and driftwood, and
seaweed. There were pools here and there, too, and these were half full
of water. Tom was striding ahead down the rocks to where a narrow neck
of land joined Lost Island to the mainland. But the girls paused for a
minute on the rocks, and looked down with happy eyes on the future haven
of the Polly Page Yacht Club.




                              CHAPTER VIII

                            DROPPING ANCHOR


“I told you it was just a knob of land sticking out from the shore,”
said Tom. “It’s nearly a quarter of a mile long.”

Polly lifted her head, and drew in a deep, long breath of the cool,
salty air that blew in from the southeast. She looked down at the
“Knob,” as they soon grew accustomed to calling the island. There was a
fine incurved beach for bathing, with a great, tumbled mass of rocks at
the farther end that rose higher and higher at the end pointing towards
the bay. Young willow and scrub pine grew short and thick wherever they
could get a footing in the rock crevices, and there was plenty of grass,
but it was tall and sharp pointed and tinted queer colors from the tide.

“You can walk away out yonder into the water at low tide,” said Tom.
“The beach is a fine one, better than we’ve got at Fair Havens. There
ain’t any deep holes at all. That’s a pretty good landing too. It lops
over some, but that won’t hurt anything. You’ll get used to it, and it’s
easy to moor to.”

The girls scrambled after him down the rocky path, and followed him as
he picked his way over the sand bar, stepping from one grass hummock to
the next.

“This is high and dry at low tide,” called back Tom. “Guess you’ll have
to jump some places now.”

“Some places!” repeated Sue, holding up her clean linen skirt in dismay.
“I’m hopping like a frog now, and my shoes are wet. We’ll need a balloon
or an air ship when the tide comes in.”

“Here’s the house,” came Tom’s cheery voice, beyond a sand dune, his
bare feet having carried him swiftly over the places where the girls had
to pick their way. And all at once they saw it, the place they had
dreamed of, and talked of, and hoped for, for nearly two weeks. It was
gray, and lopsided like the landing place, and as weatherworn as the
Carey’s paling fence. Some fisherman had built it years ago, and
shielded it from the northwest winds by putting it close against the
sand dune; facing south, it looked out over the Sickle. He must have had
a variable mind, that first fisherman, for he had started out with two
rooms, then added a lean-to, and yet another lean-to, and then had built
a third one that leaned fairly over on the original lean-tos. The
lean-to portion of the house then leaned all together on the sand dune,
but the front part was up on a rock foundation, and there was a
fair-sized porch across it that Mrs. Holmes had built, when the boys had
taken it for a summer camp.

But in spite of the new supports under the flooring, it had a decided
tilt to leeward, from generations of storms that had whacked it, and
battered it, and all but demolished it. A tall flag staff still reared
itself squarely in front of the steps, and at sight of it Polly ran
ahead of the others.

“What is it, Polly?” called Ruth, holding to her hat.

“I know what she’s going to do, I know,” cried Sue. “Salute the colors!”

Polly reached the flag staff, and took the “colors” from her reefer
pocket, where they had been safely tucked away, against the time
appointed. She had made that flag herself. It had been her special
contribution to the general belongings of the club, and as Polly ran it
gallantly up to the top of the pole, the girls sent up a good, round
cheer, and even Tom threw his cap high in the air.

“’Rah! ’Rah! ’Rah!” he shouted. “She’s a-flying a good one.”

“That’s a blue triangular pennant,” explained Sue. “It’s a golden sun on
a field of blue.”

“A golden sun rampant, isn’t it?” Crullers put in.

“No, dear, couchant,” Sue laughed. “Why will you talk about heraldry
when you don’t know anything about it. I’ve studied it all up.”

The sand had drifted up around the porch base in regular hillocks,
nearly to the railing.

“When we get too tired to use the steps,” Polly said, “we can just step
over the railing, and slide down.”

“I can’t find a door,” said Isabel, doubtfully, as she came around the
house from a tour of inspection, and Kate began to chant, teasingly,

             “Oh, I wish my room had a floor,
               I don’t care so much for a window or a door.
             But I wish my room had a floor!”

“What’s that funny little cupola up on top?” called out Polly.

“That’s the lookout,” explained Tom. “Lots of houses alongshore have
them. It’s so the women folks at home can climb up there in foul
weather, and look out towards sea through glasses, to see if the ships
are coming home.”

“Oh, I like that,” Polly said. “I’ve got ever so many ships that are
coming home some day, and when I get discouraged after this I shall
build a lookout in my heart and climb up there with a spy glass and see
how the weather is out to sea, and maybe I’ll see a sail.”

“Polly, you sentimental goose,” laughed Kate, slipping one arm around
the commodore. “You never see things just as they are.”

“I see them the way they ought to be, and that’s better,” Polly smiled
back. “Where’s Tom?”

“Prying off the planks that are nailed over the doors and windows,” Sue
called, and presently they all went inside.

There were no plastered walls or ceilings. All the rooms were finished
off like the interior of a cabin, with narrow boards nailed close
together, and there was a spicy, pungent odor through the house, like
spruce woods. One thing the girls hailed with delight. Right up through
the center of the house rose a great, old-fashioned round rock chimney.
Three fireplaces opened into it, and you could stand in any one of them
and look up at the blue sky. Long shelves stretched across the tops of
the fireplaces, and there were iron cranes on each side on which to hang
pots.

“Where are the grates?” asked Isabel.

“Aren’t any grates,” responded Tom. “You just lug in an armful of
driftwood and pile it on those rocks and start her up. We piled rocks
around outside for fenders, ’cause father thought maybe the sparks would
hit the flooring some day.”

“Won’t we just pile on wood there on chilly nights, girls?” Ruth
exclaimed, kneeling down and holding out her hands, as if she could feel
the blaze even then.

“And sit around on cushions, and tell stories, and eat toasted
marshmallows, and Aunty Welcome’s hermits,” added Ted.

“Oh, poor Aunty,” cried Polly, in sudden dismay. “I never told her where
we were going, and she’ll think we’re drowned sure. Let’s hurry, now,
and be businesslike. How much furniture is here, Tom?”

“Ain’t any at all,” said Tom, cheerfully. “Just some chairs, and a
table, and some beds, and dishes.”

“Well, that’s all we’ll need,” Polly told him. “Did you think we wanted
pianos or consoles?”

“Those aren’t furniture,” said Tom. “Those are just fixin’s.”

“Where can we get fresh water?” Kate asked.

“There’s a well at our place. I’ll bring you up some twice a day, and
oftener if you need it. You can freshen the salt water for cooking.
Mother’ll show you how.”

“I think it’s splendid to have near neighbors like you,” said Polly.
“Maybe we’ll be able to do something for you before the summer’s over.”

Tom poked his bare toes into the sand sheepishly.

“Oh, that’s all right. Mother and Nancy are mighty glad you’ve come. It
gets pretty lonesome way out here on the Sickle. I don’t mind it so
much, because I’m going into the coast service with father as soon as
I’m old enough, but Nancy wishes she had some girls to talk to. There’s
plenty over in the village, but that’s too far off, and the crowd at the
Orienta or the hotel and cottages, we folks don’t see much of. My Aunt
Cynthy says she’ll take Nancy any time over in the village and bring her
up, but mother says she guesses she’ll hang on to her only girl. Nancy
likes you girls, because she says you seem different.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, you’re not all starched up the way the others are over at the
hotel.” He squinted one eye at the sun. “It’s half-past twelve, and more
too.”

Regretfully the girls took leave of their new kingdom, but as they
walked back along the bay shore road to the hotel, they turned every now
and then, and saw the little blue and gold pennant streaming valiantly
in the breeze, and as Polly remarked, it certainly did look home-like.

They did not stop at the Carey cottage going back. It was a good mile
around to the hotel, and the Admiral was waiting for them on the
veranda.

“Polly, you go up and calm Welcome,” he said, the first thing. “She’s
been down to me about sixty-nine times to ask me to send the life-savers
after you. You run up before you have your lunch and show her there are
no bones broken.”

Polly obeyed gladly enough. The old  mammy was very dear to her,
and her arms had been the only shelter she had known when the Admiral
was away from Glenwood ever since her own mother died.

“Deed, chile, if I ain’t powerful glad to see you!” Welcome exclaimed,
as soon as she set eyes on her. “Praise de Lord, oh, mah soul! Has you
been way off in dat blazin’ sunlight and no parasol? If you ain’t de
carelessest chile I ever did see. You’ll get so freckled dere won’t
anybody know you under your bridal veil, you mind what I say, now.”

“No, I won’t, Aunty, truly. Listen. It’s just the happiest sort of a
place, and I know you’ll love it. There are big fireplaces and a wide
porch to sit out on, and you can see way out over the ocean and over the
bay too. I don’t see why we can’t go over as soon as we have finished
luncheon.”

“How do you intend totin’ me through all dat sand?” asked Aunty with
dignity.

“We’re not going to tote you at all. We’re going to roll you,” laughed
Polly, as she reached up, and took the wrinkled brown face between her
fresh young palms. “Listen, you old dear. Just you go down and have your
dinner, and then make out a list of what we need to cook with, and I’ll
send Tom over to the village after it this afternoon.”

“Is dere anything to cook _in_?” asked Aunty, still unmollified.

“One iron kettle, one spider, a baking pan, and two sauce-pans,”
enumerated Polly. “And some dishes.”

“Well, it’s a mighty good thing I packed up plenty in de boxes,” said
Aunty solemnly, and with deep gratification. “I felt it in mah bones it
was a desert isle, and I’ve done kept mah eye on dose boxes ever since
we left Ole Point Comfort behind us. I’ve watched ’em, and I’ve sat on
’em, and I just know dey’s safe.”

Polly said nothing, but she thought hard. She had forgotten all about
the two big packing-cases that contained their bedding, and general camp
outfit. The last she had seen of them, they had been stowed away on the
lower deck of the _Hippocampus_ for safekeeping.

“Don’t you fret one bit, dear,” she said at last, “I’ll ask grandfather
where they are, and if they’re not here, then they must be there. Stoney
told me when I lost my cap overboard, a thing is never lost as long as
you know where it is. Just make out that list, Aunty, for us, and we’ll
hurry up with luncheon, and coax grandfather to let us go over this
afternoon to the club-house for good.”

It didn’t require very much coaxing. Polly herself broached the subject
at the table down in the long, shady dining-room, and the Admiral told
her she might do as she pleased.

“I’m not going to interfere except when it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll
just stop here for a while till you’re on your course, then I’ll go
South again until the regatta. You manage your own fleet. I’ll be on
that veranda for a week longer, though, and if there’s any mutiny or
danger, just send a couple of rockets and I’ll come alongside.”

“Wireless, Admiral Page, wireless,” Kate corrected, in her amusing way.
“We’re strictly up-to-date, you know. Polly will have a wireless
apparatus over there sure as can be, and you’ll get many a ‘C.Q.D.’”

“Grandfather, dear,” began Polly, suddenly remembering, “where are the
two big boxes with all our things in?”

“On the way to the island this minute,” answered the Admiral. “That is
once I forestalled you, young lady. But here’s one question I cannot
solve, so I shall have to put it before the club. How are we to get
Aunty Welcome to the island?”

Polly meditated. So did the rest, but Ruth solved the problem.

“When the wagon comes back from taking the boxes over, send Aunty back
in it.”

Polly hugged her joyously.

“Whatever should we do, Grandma,” she cried, “without you to solve
things for us. Here I’ve been thinking we’d have to blindfold her the
way they do elephants to coax them on board a ship. No, thanks, I don’t
care for any shortcake,” this to the pretty waitress, as she was about
to place a goodly slice beside her plate. “I must hurry. Crullers, dear,
you may have it all.”

“Polly,” whispered Isabel, as they were leaving the long dining-room,
“those two girls at that little table, over near the veranda doors, have
been looking at us ever since we came in.”

“Maybe they like us,” Polly said, happily. She always took the cheeriest
view of everything as a matter of course. As the Admiral and his fleet
of clipper builts, as he called them, passed the table Isabel had
mentioned, Polly looked at the girls seated there, quite frankly and
interestedly. There was no doubt but what they were sisters, and Polly
liked them at first sight. The elder was about sixteen, and the younger
seemed to be about Polly’s age.

“I wonder who they are,” Isabel said, when they were up in the long,
cool, double parlors. “I like them and I wish we could get acquainted
with them before we leave. They’re very well dressed, Polly.”

Polly laughed at the serious, earnest tone.

“Isabel always judges people by their raiment,” she declared. “I know if
she met John the Baptist in camel’s hair, and Peter Pan in white
flannels like the Senator wore, she would drop Peter a gracious
courtesy, and not notice anyone else at all.”

“Oh, Polly, I would,” cried Isabel. “I am not as bad as that, but I do
believe that clothes show character, just as cleanliness or good manners
do. I have seen ever so many persons whose clothes may have cost lots of
money, but they looked like patchwork quilts. These girls didn’t. They
were dressed with taste, and their dresses were hand embroidered linen
too. I do wonder who they are. I like the way they do their hair,
braided, then tied up Dutch fashion with two big bows.”

“Do you want yours that way, you blessed old looking-glass?” Polly
crossed over to where Isabel sat, and began to arrange her long fair
braids in the same fashion. “It’s easy enough. All you do is cross them
over, so, and then tie your ribbon on, and let it flutter a little, like
a butterfly bow. You need very wide ribbon to make it look right. There,
now observe yourself, Lady Vanitas.”

Just then Crullers whispered: “Here they come.”

While Isabel was trying to balance herself on a bamboo tabourette so
that she could catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the
mantel, the other girls entered from the corridor leading to the wide
staircase, and hesitated.

“Dorothy,” called a pleasant voice from the hall. The elder girl looked
over her shoulder, caught Polly’s glance, and smiled, then they both
went on down the hall.

“Ready, mates?” asked the Admiral just then and Polly inquired who the
other two girls were.

“Commodore Vaughan’s daughters from the Orienta Club,” answered the old
Admiral. “And very mannerly children they are, too. You will meet them
later. I was talking to the Commodore just a few minutes ago.”

“Well, I’m glad we shall know them, anyway,” said Polly, as she went up
to where Aunty Welcome was waiting for them. “I wonder, girls, whether
grown people speak of us as ‘children.’ I feel half-way grown-up now. I
don’t think I’m a child.”

“Listen to her,” laughed Ruth. “And she’ll be fifteen next December.
Don’t you remember, Kate, in the ‘Mikado,’ where somebody tells the
three little maids they are not young ladies, they are only young
persons.”

“Has you been a-finding dat teehee’s nest again?” asked Aunty Welcome,
severely, as they all trouped into the room the Admiral had reserved for
them. “Ain’t you ’shamed to come along a hotel corridor giggling like
geese. And you-all from Virginny, too. Ain’t you got any State pride?”

“Oh, we will be good, Aunty,” pleaded Sue and Ted. “Don’t scold us. Just
wait till we get out on an entire island all our own.”

“I speck you’ll bring my hairs in sorrow to de grabe before you get
done,” Aunty prophesied, but her eyes twinkled, as she looked around her
at her charges.

It was past three o’clock before the caravan started. First a wagon was
sent around by the shore road, with Aunty Welcome and the luggage.

“That’s a pretty hefty load, son,” the Admiral told the sunburned
youngster who had agreed to do the hauling down to the Knob, as all the
shore people called Lost Island. He laughed, and slapped the reins on
the horses’ backs.

“Guess the colts will get there all right, sir,” he said. “They can both
of them swim.”

“We’ll be there right away, Aunty,” Polly called, receiving a reassuring
wave from a large, dark green cotton umbrella.

“Now, I begin to feel as though we were getting down to business,” Kate
said, decidedly, as she came from the telephone booth in the hotel
office. “I’ve arranged for our groceries, and they say they can send a
team over about four, because they deliver goods every morning and
afternoon to the hotel and cottages, and we might as well receive ours
that way, too.”

“Did you order stuffed olives and plenty of chocolate, Kate?” Isabel
asked.

“No, ma’am, I did not. We must have solid food, the Admiral says, and no
nonsense. Plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit.”

“Well, I like the incidental trimmings myself,” mourned Isabel.

“Ready?” asked Polly, and the caravan moved, Polly and the Admiral
bringing up the rear.

Just then the two Vaughan sisters came down the hotel steps dressed in
dark blue linen yachting suits, and as they passed, girl fashion, they
smiled at the strangers without the formality of an introduction. Polly
could not wait for time to ripen the acquaintance, but paused and spoke
to them in her impulsive way.

“I only wanted to say,” she began, as the other girls walked on with the
Admiral, “that we are from Virginia, from Queen’s Ferry, and we belong
to a—a—our yacht club. You can see the flag flying over yonder where the
shore curves before you get to the Point. We’re going to live there all
summer, and we’d be ever so glad if you would come down and see us.”

“We’d love to,” Dorothy spoke up, warmly. “This is my sister Bess. We’ll
try to come over some day next week.”

“If you do, we’ll show you how to sail a yacht,” Polly said
encouragingly, but the girls laughed.

“Oh, we go out every day on the bay in our yacht. You can see her from
here. We belong to the Junior Sailing Club at the Orienta.” Bess pointed
eagerly down to the hotel landing. “She is named the _Nixie_.”

Polly followed the direction in which she pointed, and saw a slender,
close-reefed yacht lying just below the boat landing. It was clean and
looked well-dressed, the same as its owners did. From where she stood
Polly caught a sparkle of polished brass work around the cockpit.

“We have plenty of boats, but we haven’t learned how to sail them yet,”
she said. “As soon as we do, we’ll race you.”

“That’s a challenge, remember, and we take it up,” returned Dorothy,
laughing, and Polly hurried ahead to join the others, feeling that she
had won two friends who seemed very much worth while keeping.




                               CHAPTER IX

                           THE CAPTAIN CALLS


They reached the island about four-thirty, and the remainder of the day
was crowded with things waiting to be done.

“Right now, in the beginning, let’s start with some system,” said Kate.
“If we don’t we’ll all be getting in each other’s way. Polly, come in
here and stop gazing at the water. Help me plan the house. There are
three rooms upstairs, just plain boarded chambers, but they’ll do to
sleep in if the nights are not too hot. I ordered a bolt of mosquito
netting, and we must start in to-morrow to tack it up. There are five
cots upstairs, but only one bed downstairs, in the bedroom off the
kitchen. Can you figure out where we are all to rest our weary heads? I
give it up.”

Polly considered.

“Let’s give Aunty the full grown bed, because she’s old and will have
all the cooking and washing and ironing to do. I guess we’ll have to get
two more cots. When grandfather goes back to the hotel, we can ask him
to send them up to us.”

“Where will you put them?” asked Kate, quite calmly. “On the porch?”

“No, ma’am. Right in this room. Daytimes we can turn them into divans.”

“Isn’t she a wonderful schemer?” Sue put her head in at the open window
and laughed. “Where did you pack the chafing dish?”

“In my little suitcase. Why?”

“Aunty says we may have supper out on the porch and save trouble.”

“Then I’ll fix lobster _a la_ Newburg in a jiffy.” Polly forgot all
about beds and such ordinary things, and rose at once, but the majestic
form of Welcome appeared in the kitchen doorway and waved a cooking
spoon in her direction.

“Deed, an’ you ain’t a-going to eat any sech mess before bedtime,” she
said firmly. “Yo’ keep your patience in evidence, chile, and your
obstreperousness in subjection, and I’ll have some frizzled eggs ready
before you know it, and some toast and marmalade.”

The Admiral had declined staying for tea that first night. He had looked
the entire place over, and, as Polly remarked, noticed points they never
would have thought of, the drainage, the shingles, and the condition of
the cellar. He even went down to the boat landing, and examined its
supports and noted the high tide marks along its piling.

“Seas went all the way over there, didn’t they, Tom?” he asked,
casually.

“Well, yes, sir,” acknowledged Tom. “They always do slosh over some in
heavy weather. Ours do too. When the February gales hit the Sickle, I
tell you, we all jam down pretty close to keep from being blown clean
off.”

“How about the bay? Do you get many bad puffs out there? It looks fairly
well sheltered.”

Tom nodded his head with comradely understanding. As he told his father
that night, the Admiral and he were good mates, and understood each
other perfectly.

“Oh, it blows up now and then, but if any storms should hit us, don’t
you worry. Father and I’ll keep a weather eye on the Knob. You see the
beach patrol passes about six hundred yards over to seaward. Sometimes I
tramp it with the men from the Station, because I’m going as soon as I’m
old enough.”

“You couldn’t do a braver thing, my lad,” responded the Admiral,
thoughtfully. “I feel like saluting every time I see one of the boys who
wear the fouled anchor on their sleeve. They are a courageous lot.”

While Aunty Welcome was busy preparing supper, the girls went off down
the beach, hatless and happy, with sweaters buttoned to their chins, for
the evenings were chilly along the shore.

Polly and Sue were ahead, and the rest followed as they pleased. The
tide was in full and high, and they laughed and shouted to see the long,
foamy swirls of water slip up the beach, up and up, each time a little
bit farther, till they all sprang back for fear of wet feet.

“Doesn’t it make you think of all the sea stories you ever read?” cried
Polly, her eyes shining, her long curls blown back by the wind. “When I
feel the wind like that in my face, I want to be a viking, and stand
right up in the prow of a boat, and sail, sail right out into the
sunset.”

“You’d look like the Winged Victory,” called Kate. “But I know what you
mean. Like this?” She opened her white sweater coat, and held it wide to
the wind, like wings. “It makes you feel like a gull.”

“Oh, my feet are wet, girls.” Ted sat down on a rock, and deliberately
took off her low tan shoes. “What’s the difference? I’m going barefooted
and have some fun.”

Five minutes later Aunty Welcome looked out of the kitchen door and saw
a sight that made her fairly gasp. Carrying their shoes and stockings, a
line of barefooted girls clambered up the mass of rocks at the Knob.

“Well, for de land’s sakes,” cried Aunty. “Who’d believe dose wasn’t a
pack ob gypsies?”

But the girls waved back to her, and she had to laugh over the sight
after all.

“Those rocks up there are the highest part of the island,” said Polly.
“Let’s go clear up to the top.”

The girls clambered after her, over the slippery rocks, rocks that were
gray with barnacles down along their sides. The water had filled up all
the little hollows, and Polly bent down over one to examine it.

“Just look, girls,” she said. “These are limpets, the kind that open
their shells to the tide, as if they were thirsty. You know them, Ruth.”

“_Patella pellucida_, semi-transparent, sticks to fronds of seaweed,”
responded “Grandma,” in her deliberate way.

She lifted a long, wet strand of seaweed, and waved it in the air.
Something fell off.

“It’s a crab,” said Ted. “Look at him play ’possum.”

Ruth poked at the shell diligently, until she turned it over on its
back.

“It’s a horse-shoe crab,” she said. “They call them king crabs too. They
shed their shells, and then they are the soft shelled crabs. They’re
regular fighters unless you catch one with a new shell, then he’s tame
enough.”

“What are hermit crabs, Ruth?” asked Sue.

“I don’t know why they call them hermits, unless it’s because they steal
other shells and live in them.”

“Hermits don’t do that, Ruth. They’re just people who isolate themselves
from the world.”

“Well, these crabs like to live all by themselves. They hunt up snails,
and eat the snail and steal its shell. Sometimes two crabs will fight
over the same shell.”

“Just like people,” Sue said. “I think it’s awfully queer how much
people and animals and fishes and everything look and act alike. Maybe
we’re much closer related than we think.”

“Now, Sue, I refuse to have this crab’s pedigree traced to mine,”
laughed Kate. “Throw him back into the sea.”

“That’s good,” said Crullers, solemnly. “Maybe he’s the father of a
large family.”

Polly tossed it back into the next upcurling wave, and they all made up
some poetry on the spot, and chanted joyously.

 “Oh, I am a family crab, so treat me quite tenderly.
 There are generations down below, and they’re all awaiting for me.
 I’ve sisters and cousins and aunts, and some great-grand-children too.
 So I beg you not to cook me into crab _a la_ Newburg stew.”

Suddenly a hail came from the main shore, and they were silent. It was
past sunset, and a soft twilight afterglow was settling over the world.
Coming along the ridge of sand from the Point was a lone figure, and
from where they stood it looked immensely tall, outlined against the
clear orange of the southern sky. Even while they hesitated, wondering
who it could be, Nancy’s clear voice called far down the shore,

“Ahoy, dad, ahoy!”

“It’s the Captain,” said Polly, starting to put on her stockings
instantly. “Hurry, and catch up with him. Nancy says she goes to meet
him every night.”

They slipped on shoes and stockings quickly, and ran back to the house
just in time to see Nancy and the Captain crossing the hummocks. Polly
never forgot that first look she had of Captain Ben Carey of the Sickle
Point Life Saving Station. Tom was a pretty good reproduction of him,
but there was something in the Captain’s expression that Tom lacked, a
curious look in his deep blue eyes, as though they had always gazed out
over wide distances. He was tall and broad shouldered and mighty, the
girls thought. His face was smooth-shaven, but tanned and weather-beaten
and crisped into innumerable fine wrinkles, until Sue declared it made
her think of a baked apple. His hair was thick and curly like Tom’s, and
his closely shut lips seemed to be ever smiling out at a world that even
its Maker could still pronounce good as He had at its first dawning. But
it was his voice that Polly loved best. Such a rich, hearty voice it
was, with a rollicking roll to it when it burst into a sailor boy
“come—all—ye,” and a deep, resonant tone in speaking that simply won
your heart.

“Ahoy, there, ahoy,” he shouted back, as they called to Nancy and him,
and then Polly saw that he was to be their best friend all that long
happy summer.

“It’s this way, you see,” he told them all, when they had led him up on
the porch of the cottage, and gathered around for good advice. “I’ve
told the Admiral that he may leave you here alone any time, and we’ll
all keep an eye on you. Tom and he were down to the Point awhile back,
and had a talk.”

“And he told us he was going back to the hotel,” said Polly.

“Well, he changed his course. He says to me, ‘Cap’n, do you think
they’ll be able to handle a lot of yachts alone?’ And I told him, ‘Leave
’em to me, sir, with an easy conscience. I’ll keep my mind on them, and
so will Mrs. Carey, and so will the children. And as for handling the
boats, why, Lord love you, there ain’t nothing over fifteen foot in the
lot.’ My Nancy here runs all over the bay in Tom’s knockabout, the
_Pirate_, and her own catboat. She’s been out around the Point too,
alone, in fair weather. And she’s only thirteen. Tom is going on
sixteen, and I guess betwixt the two of them, you’ll turn into able
seamen, and learn how to handle a boat. If you don’t, they won’t sink
anyhow. You want to learn how to swim, every girl jack of you, first of
all. What would you do out in the bay if the boat took a notion to stand
on her beam ends, and ship a lot of water clean over into the cockpit?
I’m a believer in swimming. It’s a good deal like unto the Kingdom of
Heaven, I’m thinking. Learn how to swim first, and all these things
shall be added unto you.” He smiled around at the circle of young faces,
and rose. “Come on, Nancy. Mother’ll have supper piping hot, and she’ll
give us pickles if we’re late.”

“Oh, please wait just a minute,” begged Polly. “We have so much to ask
you, you know. You believe in prevention first, don’t you?”

“Prevention first,” answered the Captain, a trifle gravely. “Indeed I
do, indeed I do; with over a thousand youngsters dying off every year at
our summer resorts, just from carelessness in swimming and handling
boats when they don’t know how to do either one right. Why, if I had my
way, I’d take every land lubber in the lot, and put them through a
course of sprouts, so they could qualify for a volunteer life saver ever
after. Yes, I would.”

“I can’t swim,” said Sue, ruefully. “And Polly and Kate and Ted can only
paddle around a little, and they think they could save all of us.”

“Then not one of you can go out in a yacht alone until you can all swim
like a school of tommycods,” said the Captain, positively. “If I’m to be
responsible for this station, I’m going to have things shipshape and
seamanlike. To-morrow morning every one of you be ready at ten sharp,
and Nancy and I’ll be over and teach you how to keep your chins out of
water, anyway. And not one boat shall Tom bring over until you have
learned.”

“Captain,” asked Polly, seriously, leaning forward with her chin on her
palms, “Did anything ever happen to make you feel that way?”

The Captain eyed her whimsically.

“Found me out, didn’t you? Well, I don’t care. I’ll tell you about it,
and maybe it will make you keep an eye on the buoys and signal lights. I
used to have a knockabout called the _Three Widows_—”

“What a funny name for a boat!” exclaimed Crullers.

“She was named before I got her, by a skipper out of Noank, down on the
Connecticut coast. Pretty light she was, too, and frisky in a gale. Tom
and I could haul her close, but I didn’t let her out to any of the
summer folks. Cats and flaties are the best for them, and then they
can’t drown unless they jump overboard. But, anyway, this day I had been
on duty down at the Point all night, and it was late before I got home.
It was in September, and we’d had a regular run of nor’westers with
thunder storms and general equinoctial cut-ups. Most of the summer folks
had gone home except a few down at the hotel, and while I was on duty
they persuaded Tom they could sail the _Three Widows_. And they didn’t
know when to stop.” The Captain paused to let this part of his narrative
sink deeply into the memories of his listeners.

“They sailed clear out around the Point, and when the big sea hit her
just outside the channel in the open, she keeled over like a pasteboard
box. We’d seen them by that time. Billy Clewen, the keeper at the
station, sings out to us, and we got the boat out. There were five
aboard, three lads and two of their sisters. Three went down while we
were getting to them, two boys and a girl.” The Captain cleared his
throat, and before he continued he looked out over the bay for a minute
to where a lone star had lighted its signal fire in the eastern sky.
“The last one of the lads managed to get his sister where she could get
a grip on the centerboard, and the two of them clung until we took them
off.”

“And the rest?” asked Polly, softly.

“That’s what I’m telling you. There wasn’t any rest left. None of them
could swim an inch, and they went down. And that night their fathers and
mothers came down along the Sickle yonder, and they walked the beach
with us men, walked hour after hour, and sometimes the women folks would
break down and cry. I found one of the lads myself, and brought him back
to his mother, and while my heart sympathized with her, my common sense
asked why in tunket she hadn’t taught the lad to swim and manage a boat
right before she’d let him come nigh salt water. There won’t be any boys
or girls that I have dealings with go into it till they can swim like a
tommycod. That’s all. To-morrow at ten.”

“We’ll be ready, Captain Carey,” Polly promised. After the captain and
Nancy had gone, the girls were rather subdued for a while, thinking over
the Captain’s words, and as they stood out on the porch after supper,
and looked seaward, they thought of what that night’s vigil along the
lonely shore must have been, waiting for the bodies of the loved ones to
be washed up by the waves.

It was strangely quiet away out there on the little island. They could
hear the running feet of the surf along the shore, and its steady break
against the rocks up at the Knob. The darkness seemed to fold itself
around them like a tangible presence, but it brought no sense of fear,
rather of peace and restfulness.

Over on the bay shore there were plenty of lights to keep them company.
As Ted said, the hotel looked like a Mississippi steamboat with its
triple rows of bright lights. Far out on the end of the Sickle, they
could see the Point light blinking like some great eye.

“Oh, look, Polly,” cried Isabel. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Polly leaned on the veranda railing and nodded absently, her eyes half
closed like the Captain’s, as she watched the bay.

“It makes me feel as though somebody were watching us,” she said.
“Doesn’t it seem queer to think that while we are all asleep, the life
savers patrol the beach, taking care of things. Grandfather’s a sort of
a coast patrol. He’s on the retired list, Rear-Admiral Robert L. Page,
you know. He cannot go to sea any more on active duty, but he’s our
coast patrol, and he sees that all wrecks are looked after, and relief
sent. I think he’d make a good one.”

“You don’t mean that really, do you, Polly?” Isabel never could catch a
figure of speech until it had been fully explained to her. But Polly
only smiled and straightening up she started to sing, her full, young
soprano voice floating out clearly on the still night air.

                 “Sunset, and evening star,
                   And one clear call for me!
                 And may there be no moaning of the bar
                   When I put out to sea.”

Softly the other girls came from the inner room, and joined in the old,
sweet words.

           “But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
             Too full for sound and foam,
           When that which drew from out the boundless deep
             Turns again home.

           “Twilight and evening bell.
             And after that the dark!
           And may there be no sadness of farewell,
             When I embark.

           “But though from out our bourne of Time and Place
             The flood may bear me far,
           I hope to see my Pilot face to face
             When I have crossed the bar.”

There was silence for a few minutes, then Aunty Welcome’s voice came
from the kitchen, in agonized accents,

“For de mercy sakes alive, he’s got me by mah toe!”

Sue was the first to grasp the situation, and she made a frantic dash
for the door.

“It’s my pet crab,” she exclaimed. “I found him down on the rocks after
you girls had gone away, and I brought him back and put him into a tin
can in the kitchen so we could tame him.”

“Tame a crab, you goose,” cried Polly, and she followed at headlong
speed, for Aunty’s wails rose higher and higher.

The crab had managed to wriggle out of the tin can where Sue had left
him to meditate, and had started on a leisurely examination of the
kitchen floor. Aunty Welcome’s big toe had proved a happy diversion, as
she was going to bed, and he had caught at it instantly. Polly
disconnected him with difficulty, took him down the beach, and threw him
out into the water.

“Now, you stay there, you family crab,” she cried.

“Oh, Polly, how cruel, when I wanted to tame him and study his
construction,” Sue protested.

“I reckon that was what he was trying to do to Aunty, study her
construction,” laughed Polly. “Let’s turn in now. And, say, girls,” she
paused a minute, her face suddenly sober and earnest. “I don’t know just
what it is, but doesn’t it truly seem as if we were nearer Heaven away
out here? I wonder why? And didn’t you notice that the Captain and Tom
speak of God as if they almost knew Him, instead of just worshiping Him?
Did you hear them singing ‘Pull for the Shore,’ as they walked down the
shore road to-night? While we are all here, let’s say our evening prayer
together out on the porch, and put in the one about ‘all perils and
dangers of this night.’ You know, Ruth.”

So out there in the darkness the girls knelt, with their heads bent on
the railing looking seaward, while Ruth’s voice led them in the
beautiful old evening prayer.

“‘Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O Lord, and of Thy great mercy
save and defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the
love of Thy only son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.’”

And from the far corner of the veranda, they heard Aunty Welcome’s
deep-toned response, “Amen, chile, Amen.”

So ended the first day on Lost Island.




                               CHAPTER X

                       A HOME ON THE ROLLING DEEP


At ten o’clock sharp the next morning the girls saw the Captain’s dory
round the curve of the bay shore from Fair Havens, and make for the
Knob. Nancy waved her hand to them, her face shaded by a pink sunbonnet.
The girls were already in the water, paddling around in their new
swimming suits, and splashing one another. Ted, Kate, and Polly, could
just manage to keep their chins above water, and float, but the rest
kept at waist-deep limits.

“We brought along some ring buoys,” said Nancy, as she stepped out of
the dory, and helped run it up the beach. “That’s how I learned to swim.
If you just hold on to one and start out with your feet, you can learn
to use one arm at a time.”

That they were very willing and obedient pupils, even the Captain had to
admit. Nancy was the teacher, while the Captain stood by in case of
trouble, and gave orders.

“Let yourself go,” Nancy urged Sue, as the latter clung closely to her
in the deep water. “Just let yourself go, and you’ll find out you’re
floating.”

Sue obeyed, willingly enough, and the next instant a pair of stockinged
feet waved in the air above the water. As Nancy pulled her up,
spluttering, she laughed, and insisted on going ahead, and before she
realized it she was making the stroke properly and could keep herself
afloat.

Polly had caught the stroke almost at once, and was swimming around
helping Nancy. Ruth and Kate went about it practically, counting their
strokes, and trying first in water up to their armpits. But Isabel waded
in and sat down at ease in the water, just where the waves could curl up
around her comfortably. Then she proceeded to loosen her hair, and give
it a good wetting. Then back on a rock she climbed, and sat there,
letting it dry in the sun.

“Come on in,” called Polly, splashing her with water. “You mustn’t sit
up on that rock and play you’re a nixie or a mermaid while we have to
work so hard. Come on in, and swim.”

“Oh, Polly, I don’t think I want to,” said Isabel, anxiously. “I can’t
keep the water out of my eyes.”

“Fiddlesticks,” cried the Commodore; “come and splash her, girls,” and
they drove Isabel back to work like the rest.

“Now then, now then,” shouted the Captain in his rolling bass. “Keep at
it lively, keep at it lively. Tom’s coming with the boats at noon if the
wind holds fair, and you must learn how to keep your heads out of the
bay.”

So they kept at it diligently, and when it was over they went up on the
beach. While they lay around in the warn sand, the Captain took Nancy
and gave a regular life-saving drill to show them what to do in case of
danger.

“First aid to the injured class,” Polly called it, and it was a good
name.

“Don’t scream and get excited. That’s the first and last rule I want to
give you,” he told them, emphatically. “What would you think of a boat
crew of life-savers whooping at the top of their lungs when they were
going out at a call? If you do happen to fall overboard, or you see one
of the others in trouble, don’t run and call for help. Keep cool, and
get right down to business.”

“Don’t people who are in danger of drowning try to catch hold of any one
who goes to rescue them, and they both are lost?” asked Isabel,
doubtfully. “I should think it would be better to throw them a buoy or a
life preserver or something.”

“That’s something you don’t worry about,” the Captain told her,
comfortably. “I guess if people had always been thinking of that sort of
thing, there would never have been any life saving apparatus at all. I
sorter feel that we must leave a whole lot to Him who holdeth the sea in
the hollow of His hand. Now, remember what I did just now, and how I did
it. I’ll drill you on it next week. You never can tell when it will come
in handy. Don’t start giving a drowned person strong black coffee or
clam chowder the first thing to brace them up, do you mind me? ’Tain’t
done by real life savers.” The Captain’s eyes twinkled. “Just roll them
over a barrel, or your knee, and get the water out of them; then take
hold of their tongue, using a piece of clean cloth, and get somebody
else to work their arms up and down, and if there’s any beat left in
their heart it’s going to start up again. And when you do start them
going, then it’s time enough to give them coffee, or hot ginger tea, or
anything. Mother’s great on hot ginger tea, and I don’t know but what
prayer and ginger ought to be counted in with the first aid to the
injured. I use them both myself in strong doses.”

Promptly at eleven they all straggled up the beach, a happy, dripping
lot, running in to dress and get luncheon over before Tom came with the
boats.

[Illustration: A Happy, Dripping Lot]

“Do you think we’ll do, Captain?” asked Polly, when she reappeared.

“Do? Of course you’ll do. I’ll come over every morning on my way to the
Point for a week and drill you until you can swim. Now you take Nancy
and Tom out with you this afternoon. It’s calm and easy, with a light
breeze blowing off shore. Better try going out in two of the boats for a
few days with Nancy and Tom to show you how to handle them.”

Sue ran upstairs to the “lookout,” to see if their fleet was in sight.

“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?” called Ted,
merrily.

“Here’s Tom,” Sue cried. “Oh, I wonder how soon I can make a boat act
like that.”

Tom came around the bay from Fair Havens beautifully. He was showing off
his sailor craft freely, and the fifteen-footer was as tame to his touch
as a horse to the rein. Polly watched him eagerly, as he brought it
gracefully to the landing. The name on the prow was the _Tidy Jane_.

“That’s the best sail boat in the lot,” the Captain declared, as he left
them. “Nancy named her after the first fishing boat I sailed on up to
the Banks of Newfoundland. And she’s a good one. She’s shapely as a
sloop-o’-war, and twice as slippery.”

“Then she ought to be the flag ship,” said Kate. “Why don’t you take
her, Polly?”

Polly’s face fairly glowed with pride and pleasure. Although in a way
the whole club owed its existence to her, and she was the ruling spirit,
yet she never allowed the girls to give her, as Crullers said flatly,
“the best of everything.” In a hundred ways she showed a steady, loving
generosity and unfailing thoughtfulness and courtesy to her “crew,” as
the Admiral called the rest of the club, but Polly said he was wrong.

“A crew mans one boat or vessel, but we are an independent club of yacht
racers.”

So to-day when the _Tidy Jane_ was handed over to her, she hesitated,
saying that it didn’t seem fair to the rest. But the rest insisted and
Polly consented.

“Why, I’d love her just on account of her name,” she said, as she ran
down to the landing, and stepped over into the cockpit. “You go back and
get the other boats, Tom, please. We shall want to look this one all
over till we know the name of every part of her and just what it is
for.”

“I’ll bring up a knockabout next,” said Tom.

“What’s the difference between a catboat and a knockabout?” asked Ted.

“A cat’s different from all other yachts because her mast is set right
up in the eyes of her,” explained Tom. “And she’s broader beamed, and
wider, and has only one sail.”

“She’s a beauty,” Sue exclaimed, and Polly nodded.

“I know it,” she laughed.

Tom made six more trips, and finally the last of the boats lay close to
the little landing. It was a long-remembered afternoon, as under Tom’s
guidance the girls had their first lesson in sailing them. The day was a
perfect one. A southerly breeze came up, just enough to bear them
lightly on their course over the bay. The Admiral had come down during
the afternoon and had given much valuable advice; but as Polly said
herself, as she stood on the porch at sundown, her face already tanned
and sleeves turned back to the elbows:

“All the advice in the world won’t help us to sail these boats till we
know all about them ourselves, know every bit of wood in them, and every
inch of sail, and every cleat and bolt and pin—”

“Don’t they call them pintles?” suggested Kate, but Polly never noticed
the interruption.

“And we know what they’re going to do next in all sorts of weather. But
I like it, don’t you, girls?”

“It’s glorious,” cried Ruth, enthusiastically. Her hair was hanging down
her back, while she brushed it vigorously, trying to get the salt water
harshness out of it. “I’ve named my yacht the _Iris_. It means a
rainbow.”

“Mine’s the _Patsy D._,” Sue said complacently. “I’ve always wanted a
boat named the _Patsy D._”

“_Patsy D._,” exclaimed Polly, laughing. “Why do you want to call her
that?”

“Because,” said Sue, firmly, “I want a name that will be simple and
vigorous, and easy to say, and besides the only boat I ever had a really
happy sail on was named the _Patsy D._ It’s the excursion steamer that
runs around Chesapeake Bay for Sunday-school outings, and last year she
bumped into something and spoiled the shape of her lovely nose, and now
she’s a barge down at Newport News. So I shall perpetuate her memory and
call my yacht the _Patsy D._; and you may name yours after all the
rainbows and other beauties in creation. I believe that names should be
suggestive of pleasant memories.”

“Hurrah for the _Patsy D._,” sang out Ted from the couch corner.

“I don’t care if you do make fun of it. She’s the _Patsy D._ all the
same,” said Sue, stoutly.

“How can she be the _Patsy D._?” asked Polly, teasingly.

“Well, she is,” retorted Sue. “Maybe her real name’s Patricia.”

“My boat is the _Witch Cat_ and Kate’s the _Hurricane_,” said Ted
slowly; “so we shall not have the trouble of naming ours.”

“Tom says my boat is called the _Spray_. Do you like that, Polly?”

“Yes, I do,” said Polly. “Don’t you?”

“Not very much. I thought I’d change it to the _Lurline_, or _Lorelie_.”

“I like the _Spray_ the best. The name of the yacht Dorothy and Bess
Vaughan sail is the _Nixie_. You don’t want to get too near to that.
Crullers, have you named yours? It’s the smallest one in the lot, isn’t
it?”

“Yes. Her name is the _Yum-Yum_. The sail is like a junk boat’s,”
Crullers announced, thoughtfully; “or a bat’s wing.”

“Tom says the boys fitted it out that way, just for a novelty. It’s
broad, and deep, and wide, and positively unsinkable.”

“I’ve got two life preservers, and three ring buoys in the lockers,”
Crullers said. “Tom and the Captain put them in there so I’d feel
perfectly safe and easy.”

“Safe and easy? Safe and easy?” Aunty Welcome’s voice came from the
kitchen. “Dey ain’t nuffin on earth could make me feel easy a-sailing
round on de face ob de deep like a leviathan. You couldn’t get me on dat
waste of waters in sech a li’l’ boat for all de gold in de bowels ob de
earth. No, sah.”

“Oh, but, Aunty, you’re going in swimming with us some day,” coaxed
Polly.

“Deed, I wouldn’t any more’n I’d step into an open grabe and pull de
cover in after me,” protested Welcome. “Last night I couldn’t sleep a
wink a-listening to de rolling ob de waves.”

“Girls, just look out there,” cried Kate suddenly, as she rose and
pointed over the bay towards the Point Light. It was past sunset, the
purple hour, as Polly always called it, and the whole world lay wrapped
in softest violet. From somewhere beyond the Point, a deep, long-drawn
whistle sounded, then another, then another. A faint sound of music
drifted to them on the night air, and as the steamer rounded, they
caught a glimpse of her cabin lights, a row of gleaming diamonds against
the gloom of the twilight. Then a search-light sent a quick arm of
radiance flashing over the bay, and for a second the little group on the
porch were right in its path, before it swept on.

“I didn’t know any steamers ran in here,” said Polly. “Isn’t that
splendid? Perhaps it comes often, and it’s really company just to see it
go by.”

“It must be the Portland boat,” said Kate. “There’s one that makes a
landing at Eastport, Tom said, and stops first at the hotel pier, before
it goes up through the inlet.”

“Then that must be the steamer that grandfather meant, when he said he
would go back by boat. He’ll go from Eastport to Portland, then down the
coast to Boston, and so on straight south.”

“Then we’ll be alone away off here,” said Isabel, sadly. “Doesn’t it
seem deserted? Think of it when there’s a storm.”

“And the thunders roll from pole to pole,” groaned Polly, mischievously.
“Sue, get your mandolin, quick. Let’s play something that will ‘soothe
this restless feeling and banish the thoughts of day.’”

Across the inlet made by the Knob’s projection into the bay, the sound
of music floated even to Fair Havens, and Nancy stopped her evening task
of washing the supper dishes to listen at the open door. The girls over
at the Knob were singing, with the three mandolins and guitar giving a
splendid accompaniment. Across the water the melody seemed indescribably
softened and enhanced, as the gay, girlish tones rang out:

                   “Oh, a life on the ocean wave,
                   A home on the rolling deep,
                   Where the scattered waters rage,
                   And the winds their revels keep.
                   And the winds (bing, bing),
                   And the winds (bing, bing),
                   And the winds their revels keep.”

“I just love that bing, bing part,” said Nancy, drawing in a deep
breath. “May I go over some evening, mother, and hear them play?”

“Indeed, you may,” Mrs. Carey replied heartily. “For they seem to be as
warm-hearted and well-mannered a lot of girls as I ever did see, and the
Captain, your father, agrees with me.”

“They’re not like those Vaughan girls from the hotel,” Tom said,
stopping his whistling long enough to join in the conversation. “They
had that knockabout of theirs out on the bay to-day, and when I sent out
a hail at them they never even waved a hand. Some folks haven’t any more
sociability than a mosquito.”

“They waved to Polly, Tom,” Nancy said; “but then I do believe the fish
would stand up on their tails and waggle their fins at her, if she sang
out to them.”

“What was it that father said about her?” asked Mrs. Carey, smiling till
her blue eyes were almost hidden in wrinkles, as she stopped her mending
a moment, and leaned back in the big, red rocker beside the south window
where the roses climbed.

“Said she carried the starriest top-lights he ever saw on a craft under
her t’gallant eyebrows.”

Mrs. Carey laughed as she turned to her sewing.

“Well, she has a pair of the brownest eyes, seems to me, I ever saw. And
she’s lively too. I’d a sight rather have those girls than a pack of
boys raising hob over there on the island all summer long. I hope
nothing will happen to any of them.” She looked out of the window
towards the Knob. Its outlines showed up darkly against the night sky,
but the music had died away and no light was to be seen. “I think I’ll
tell the girls to put a lamp in that side window every night, so I’ll
know they’re safe and comfortable.”

So after that first night, all summer long while the Polly Page Yacht
Club held forth on Lost Island, a beacon light was placed at the side
window to assure the Careys all was well.




                               CHAPTER XI

                            SMUGGLERS’ ISLE


For the first two weeks hardly anything was done, except steady, earnest
lessons in swimming and sailing. The excitement and novelty of it made
the sport a delightful one to the girls, and they were out whenever the
weather was good. During the morning hours the bay held many bathers,
over on the hotel shore, and on the strip of beach at the Knob likewise.
Afternoons the white sails spread and dipped like gulls out on the
water, and the _Tidy Jane_ was usually the first out and the last one
in. After the first week or so, Tom and Nancy helped only occasionally,
but the girls were doing so well they did not need much direction now.

The Admiral returned south at the end of the second week, but promised
to run up for the regatta in the latter part of August, and make sure
they were getting along.

“If it wasn’t for the Careys I’d feel as though it were risky, my
leaving you girls up here with just Welcome to see that you have plenty
to eat and don’t come down with croup—”

“We don’t have croup, grandfather,” Polly interposed, that last day,
when he dined with them in state at the little cottage.

“Well, never mind, whatever you should be threatened with, I know that
the Captain has you on his mind, and you’ll be looked after and made to
behave if you get too headstrong.”

“What will he do to us?” Ted and Sue leaned eagerly forward.

“Put you in irons down below,” laughed the Admiral, and he sang a line
or two of a rollicking sailor song,

                     “Down below, down below.
                     Sailors often go below,
                     Storms are many on the ocean.
                     Sailors have to go below.”

But they missed him until the duties and excitement of the yacht club
made them even forget his departure. Like everything else she undertook,
Polly went into the thing heart and soul, with both feet and hands and
her sleeves rolled up, as Sue said. She was up at five and down on the
beach with Ruth, hunting over the last tide’s treasures for new
specimens for their collections. Although Ruth was seventeen and Polly
not quite fifteen, they had been such staunch, firm friends at school
that the summer vacation seemed to draw the ties of friendship all the
closer.

“Ruth always understands just what I mean,” said Polly. “Everybody else
thinks I am too quick-spoken and changeable. But I’m not, truly I’m not;
am I, Ruth?”

“Yes, you are, too,” Ruth answered, in her placid way. “But I like you
for it. You’re like a sea anemone. They can change their colors, you
know, to match their surroundings. And I think it’s a good plan, the
same as the chameleon. Somebody, Emerson or Thoreau, I forget which,
says we should all keep our natures in tune with the harmony of the
spheres. What does that mean but adapting yourself to your immediate
environment—”

“Cut out the big words, Grandma,” Polly said, briefly. “It makes me
think of Honoria, and I’ll get homesick if you don’t stop.”

“Well, you know what I mean, Polly, don’t you? It’s why you’re always a
favorite with us, even your very first year you could sit down at
Calvert Hall and listen sympathetically to Miss Calvert’s detailed
description of how much she had suffered from neuralgia; then you’d go
right down to the kitchen and cheer up poor Annie May and tell her the
sun was surely coming out right away, and her ‘rheumatuz’ would be
better. Then upstairs you’d fly, and help Crullers with her Algebra, Sue
with her English Literature, and me with my Civics, and still have time
to get your own work done before class-time. And you never grumbled one
bit.”

“No, but I lose my temper all at once,” said Polly dolefully, as she
picked up a starfish out of a tiny pool left by the tide and
straightened out its arms. “Never mind me now, though. Let’s not talk
psychics. Look at this fellow, Ruth. Wonder if Sue would want to tame
him to walk a tight-rope.”

Polly lay flat down in the sand, despite her fourteen years, and
examined the starfish at close range, in true youngster fashion, while
Ruth poked it over gently with a long splinter of wood.

“They say if one of its arms breaks off, another will grow in its
place,” said Ruth.

“Will it? I wish ours would. Think how nice it would be for all the
<DW36>s if their arms and legs would only sprout again. Can starfish
see, Ruth?”

“Indeed they can. See that tiny red speck at the end of each arm? That’s
the eye. Its mouth is underneath, and look at all the feet on the under
side of the rays, Polly. They say a starfish is like a sieve, all tiny
holes that the water runs through.”

“Well, this one is going to be dried, neatly dried,” said Polly. “It’s a
shame to do it, but in the interests of science he must be dried.”

“Don’t show it to Sue, then,” Ruth suggested. “She’ll want to tame it,
surely. She wants to tame everything we find and make a pet of it. Tom
brought her two turtles this morning, besides a tin box half full of
periwinkles. She’s trying to train them to come out of their shells when
she whistles to them; think of it, Polly.”

“Ruth, what’s a chambered nautilus?” Polly picked up a round shell,
white and fragile, with little raised dots on it like lace work.

“That is not,” laughed Ruth. “That’s a sea urchin, I think. You can find
the nautilus only in the tropics. They call them Argonauts too, did you
know it? I think it’s pretty, for they say they can rise to the surface
of the sea and spread a little sail.”

Polly leaned back her head, her hands clasped behind it, and repeated
softly:

       “This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign
       Sails the unshadowed main.
       The venturous bark that flings
       On the sweet summer winds its purple wings,
       In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings,
       And coral reefs lie bare,
       And the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.”

“Oh, I love that,” Ruth exclaimed, pushing back her hair from her face,
as she, too, leaned back to listen. “Say it all, Polly?”

“Not now,” Polly shook her head, “wouldn’t it be a good idea, though,
for us to have a sea-poetry night while we’re here? Build a great
driftwood fire on the beach, and invite everybody we know, and toast
marshmallows, and each one recite or sing her favorite piece about the
sea.”

“Fine, Polly, fine,” Ruth nodded her head emphatically. “The Vaughan
girls might come over, and Nancy and Tom and maybe Mrs. Carey. Let’s.”

They wandered away, then, towards the long line of rocks that appeared
at low tide at the head of the Knob. Polly said they looked like the
Aleutian Islands in miniature, and she felt like a lady Colossus
stepping out over them. By hunting very closely around them, one could
find what Ruth called “the enchanted gardens of the sea;” little pools
in the rocks, with sea moss that, when turned over, was full of life,
crawling, sprawling, atomic life. The finest strands of seaweed were
away out there also, great loose bunches, some like fern fronds, others
like live moss, and some like chains of big brown beads or beans.

“Have you found any limpets yet, Polly?” called Ruth. “They’re the
wisest ’possums you ever saw. They shut their shells up closely when
they know the tide has gone, and then when it comes in, they lift up the
top like a little tent, and let the water in to take a drink.”

Polly had taken off her shoes and stockings, and she paddled intrepidly
about in the water, and poked after new things. There had been a heavy
sea the night before, and the beach was strewn with strands of seaweed,
and driftwood, and a fringe of shells at the high tide mark.

Among the odd things they found were oysters fastened in all sorts of
strange shapes to bits of rock and wave-worn stones. Polly found a
smooth white one, nearly a perfect oval, with two shells opening upward
from it, like wings, and she called it Mercury’s slipper. Another flat,
green rock had ten tiny baby oysters clinging to it, the shells
overlapping one another like barnacles.

So it went every day. When they had a good-sized collection, they would
go up on the porch, to sort out, and share, and trade. The prettiest
ones they saved for paper weights, but Isabel and Kate refused to
declaim over the oystered rocks. With pails they hunted up and down the
shore for the pink and green and opal tinted shells that Marbury had
nicknamed Neptune’s finger nails. These shells were very shy of the
land. You had to walk along the very edge of the water, and watch each
incoming wave, then catch the wisps of shells before they slipped back
into deep water. Some were pale green, some a cloudy pearl like opals,
and others were deep salmon pink. Some were iridescent, and gleamed in
the sunlight beautifully. Isabel had set her heart on stringing a
portìere to carry back to her mother, and Kate was making one for Miss
Calvert as a memento of their summer vacation.

Sue’s hobby was the live castaways of the sea. While the other girls
hunted for shells and seaweed, she it was who sought crabs, lobsters,
fish, and turtles. Tom brought her some fish poles, and Nancy would join
her as she sat on the little, lopsided landing place, fishing tranquilly
hour after hour. Good luck attended her, too. Many a savory mess did she
bring up to Aunty Welcome for their dinner, and several mornings, long
before the other girls were awake, she had sailed away out with Tom and
Nancy to what the former called the Little Banks, where the cod ran. One
day when the wind had been in the right quarter, they even sailed out
around the Point, and caught a glimpse of the open channel out to sea,
and the life saving station.

“Nancy,” Sue had said solemnly that day, when they tacked and started
homeward, “I should think you would be so proud of your father you
wouldn’t know what to do. Don’t you know that a life saver is a hero?
Why, down home, if a man saves anybody else’s life, he gets a medal,
sometimes from Congress, and it is all written up in the papers, and
away off up here, these men go on saving people and saving them, and no
one hears anything about it or seems to think it’s wonderful.”

Nancy nodded. “Oh, yes, they have medals too, sometimes.”

“But not enough. How many people do you really suppose the Captain has
saved?”

“Oh, my, I don’t know,” laughed Nancy. “There are ever so many of them.
I don’t think even father has kept track. He says it’s just his day’s
work, and his duty. His favorite hymn is the one we so often sing at
church over in the village, ‘Brightly Gleams Our Father’s Mercy.’”

Nancy’s strong young voice sang out the sweet old hymn until it fairly
echoed over the waters. She was at the tiller of the _Pirate_, Tom’s
catboat, while Sue sat up on what Nancy called “the lid,” the little
deck between the cock pit and the coaming, her feet dangling over in
true sea-rover fashion.

The lighthouse and life-saving station stood out in silhouette against
the bright, sapphire sky, and the sea had the glimmer and the sheen of a
blue bird’s glancing wing, with tints that changed prismatically with
every cloud shadow.

“Nancy,” called Sue, suddenly, bending forward to take a better look at
an island they were passing, “what’s that pile of rock over there,
shaped like a tower?”

“It is a tower, or used to be. That’s Smugglers’ Cove. Father says he’s
heard his father tell how a band of Nova Scotia pirates used to put in
this bay years and years ago, and land their goods on this island, and a
family of fishermen lived here who were really smugglers.”

“Are there any left now?” asked Sue, her blue eyes wide with interest.

Nancy shook her head, the fresh breeze blowing her yellow hair back from
her tanned, happy face, that always seemed to be smiling like the
Captain’s.

“They didn’t play fair with the pirates, and one night a ship was seen
just outside the harbor, and nobody knows her name, or where she was
bound. But after that night no living soul was ever seen on the island
again, and the pirates never entered Eagle Bay after that. Father says
after a few years some fisher boys ventured to land there, but they
didn’t find anything. The pirates had carried away everybody, and all
that belonged to them.”

“Maybe they left some buried treasure there.” Sue’s tone was brimful of
romance and wonderment, but Nancy answered in a matter-of-fact way:

“Maybe. Nobody knows. And years ago, too, there was a big French boat
wrecked off our coast that was blown southward down the shore, and folks
say there was treasure on board, money for the French provinces up in
Nova Scotia and Canada. So that’s down with the fishes too, probably.”

“Oh, dear,” said Sue, ruefully, “and here I thought it might be some
place where we could get it. Polly’d find a way if there was any sort of
chance. I wish we could train a tommycod to go down and bring up one
piece of gold at a time.”

“It isn’t in pieces. It’s gold bars, bullion, father called it.”

“Then it will have to be a tame tommycod. Just wait till I tell Polly.”

Polly’s opinion was given swiftly. Her eyes sparkled as soon as she
heard the story of Smugglers’ Cove.

“Let’s take lunch, and all sail over there to-morrow and explore.”

“The Commodore’s word is law,” replied Kate, laughing. “Aye, aye, sir.”

They had found out the very first week after their arrival that a
row-boat was a necessity for shore trips.

“Something like a dory or a ‘dink,’” Ted suggested. “I know my brothers,
when they took the yacht out, talked about the ‘dink,’ and it was a
little boat swung up handily to use when the yacht wasn’t needed.”

“That’s the dinghey, you mean,” Tom told her. “You folks over here need
a dory.”

“Well, what’s the difference between the two, Tom?” Polly called from
the inner room, where she sat writing letters home, so Tom could take
them over to Eastport that afternoon.

“A dory’s a freebooter, and her own mistress,” said Tom, “but a dinghey
belongs to the ship her painter’s fastened to.”

“Then we want a dory.”

Accordingly a dory found its way over, and became part of the club’s
equipment. The girls liked it, too; they averaged from two to six trips
a day in it over to Fair Havens. It was handy when they wanted to send
by Tom or the Captain to the village for groceries, for they could bring
them home in the dory from the Captain’s house.

Friday night it was when Sue told of Smugglers’ Cove, and they decided
to picnic there the next day; so early the next morning Polly rowed over
to ask Nancy to go with them.

“I had better help mother with the cleaning,” Nancy said, hesitatingly,
but Mrs. Carey smilingly waved her away.

“Land, Nannie, you’re only young once. Go along and be happy. There
isn’t much to do at all.”

“We’ll have to start away from the island at about five, Polly,” Nancy
said, as she slipped off her big apron and brushed her hair, “because
the Portland boat gets in to-day, and she’s due at six-thirty. We had
better keep out of her way.”

“Yes, and you children don’t want to catch her swell in those wisps of
boats,” Mrs. Carey added, firmly.

“They wouldn’t sink, would they, Mrs. Carey?” Polly asked.

“Maybe they wouldn’t, but they’d ship a lot of water, and rock so that
any one who wasn’t used to them, might be thrown overboard, and in a
heavy sea like the Portland boat leaves behind her there’d be no picking
you up.”

Polly forgot to tell the girls the warning, and in the hurry of
preparation for the day’s jaunt it slipped from her memory. Aunty
Welcome packed a mighty lunch for them, but flatly refused to be one of
the party. It was their first extended sail without Tom’s company to
reassure them against mishap, but the day was perfect for sailing, and
the yachts took the breeze as lightly and as easily as gulls. Polly led,
and took a course across the bay towards the hotel, then tacked, and
started straight for Smugglers’ Cove. The _Tidy Jane_ led the way
gallantly, clear to the Cove, as a flagship should, but the girls
declared it was no proof of the _Jane’s_ superiority as a sailing craft.
It was the way the Commodore handled her. While the others handled their
main sheets gingerly and cautiously, letting out and tacking slowly,
Polly was ready and waiting as soon as she reached the end of the first
course to let go, and the minute the point was reached, biff! Polly’s
sail slackened, the boom swung about, and the cotton caught the puff in
a jiffy, and was off on the new stretch.

“Some day you’ll do that, and you’ll tumble over into the water,” Isabel
told her. “I always expect to get hit on the head when my boom swings
about.”

“Then you’ll be like Yonny Yohnson, the little Swedish sailor from
Stockholm that the Captain told us about,” laughed Polly. “Listen,” and
she quoted: “‘Yonny Yohnson, he yump off yib-boom into yolly boat, and
spoil his yellow yacket.’”

Crullers was always the last to get started from the landing. Yachting
with Jane Daphne Adams, as Polly said, was a serious matter, and she
gave it her undivided attention. Her sail was different from those on
the other boats. It was shorter and wider, and ribbed crosswise like a
junk boat’s sails. Tom told them that Phil and Jack, Polly’s cousins,
had put it on, just as a freakish notion, and it surely was freakish to
look at; but it was easy to handle and Crullers liked it. There was no
cabin, but the cockpit was roomy and had several lockers underneath the
seats.

“Cabin,” she had said quite scornfully, when the girls had said it was
too bad she didn’t have one. “Call that little dark hole a cabin? Why,
it’s all you can do to turn around in it. And even if I did have one,
I’d only use it to sleep in, and then where would my yacht be?”

“You mean where would you be?” laughed Polly.

It was a little past eight in the morning when they arrived at
Smugglers’ Cove. There was a line beach to run up on, and the shores
looked inviting.

“This is a perfect cove,” said Ruth. “It must have given the place its
name years ago. Those little bunches of grass over yonder look like an
atoll, girls, the way they bob up here and there around the shore.”

It took some time for the newly fledged skippers to drop anchor, and
furl their sails, but finally it was done. The tide was out, and the
girls took off their shoes and stockings and waded up the beach from the
boats, carrying their lunch boxes and some pillows that Aunty Welcome
had put in at the last minute. It was comical to see the procession of
eight wading in, each with a gayly  sofa pillow on her head, and
a box under one arm, but finally everything they wanted was ashore, and
the invasion of Smugglers’ Cove was complete.

Polly said it would be better to explore before the sun rose high, and
they started off, taking the beach as the surest path. It was even a
better strip of sand than they had at the Knob, firm and beautifully
white, with the remains of millions of infinitely tiny shells crumbling
into it. Polly took up a handful of sand and called Ruth to come and
look at it.

“I wish we had a microscope. It’s all fragments of shells. Isn’t it
lovely, Ruth?”

“Wait till you see the Castle,” Nancy called. “That’s what everybody
along shore calls it, Smugglers’ Castle. The walls are made of rocks and
shells, and a sort of clay with shells stuck in it.”

“Like the old walls at St. Augustine,” Polly exclaimed. “They are like
mosaic, the shells are matched in so perfectly.”

“Oh, girls, I just thought of a good plan,” Kate remarked, suddenly.
“Wouldn’t it be dandy for us to keep a log-book?”

“But do yacht clubs keep them?” Isabel said dubiously.

“I don’t know whether they do or not,” Kate returned. “But I think it
would be fine for this yacht club to. Keep a regular daybook of general
events, I mean, everything that happens to us of general interest. Then
at the end of the vacation, have eight copies, and bind them in linen
covers to keep as souvenirs.”

“Kate, we’ll do it,” Polly said, approvingly. “Call it the Memory Log
Book of the Castaways of Lost Island.”

“What a dandy place for ghosts,” Sue called back to them, as she climbed
up the rocks, her shoes and stockings in her hand.

“Girls, look at this!” Polly stopped short, and pointed down at the
beach. There were footsteps plainly to be seen in the sand.

“Who on earth could it be?” Isabel gasped, while Nancy ran down the
shore, and knelt to look at them more closely. Polly’s eyes danced with
fun, and she sang softly under her breath:

                 “Oh, Robinson Crusoe, he lived alone,
                 On a little island, he called his own,
                 No one to say when he came home,
                 Robinson Crusoe,
                 What made you do so?”

“Don’t, Polly, please,” Ruth said softly, her face rather anxious. “You
can’t tell who may be here now, looking at us, when we can’t see them.”

“Who cares?” Polly laughed, merrily. “It makes it all the better. I
never read about an island yet but what it had savages, or pirates, or
something on it to make it interesting. This pirate wears real shoes
anyway, so he’s partly civilized. You can tell by the footprints in the
sand. But what are all these other funny marks all around. One, two,
three, one, two, three, as if a campstool had danced a jig in the wet
sand.”

“Maybe it’s somebody clamming,” said Crullers, hopefully.

“You don’t clam that way,” Polly told her. “You dig for clams. You don’t
spear them.”

“I don’t,” Ted said quite seriously. “I take my mandolin and sit down on
the sand, and play to them, and they all come out and smile at me.”

“You silly goose,” Polly laughed, but Ted ran on ahead after Sue. She
had vanished suddenly over the rocky ledge ahead. They could hear her in
the distance singing “Nancy Lee” at the top of her healthy young lungs;
then all at once there was a dead silence.

“Maybe they’ve caught her,” whispered Isabel. “Let’s run for the boats.”

“Run, and leave Sue behind?” Polly’s tone was full of reproach. “Not if
I know it. Here are seven of us, and we’re all good and hearty. We’ll go
and find out the trouble.”

They turned away from the beach and started up the rocks, Nancy and
Polly leading. At the top they paused. The entire island lay outspread
before them. It was a mass of sand, with gradually rising rock ledges
towards its center, and scrub pines and willows everywhere. Right in the
center, on the highest rock, rose the Castle, or “Smugglers’ Tower,” as
it had been called. It was built over the site of the old fisherman’s
hut, and was half overgrown by moss, vines, and clambering shrubs.
Inside the ruins, willows and young birches had grown up in defiance of
the place. But Sue was nowhere in sight, and they could see all over the
island from where they stood.




                              CHAPTER XII

                           “GIRL OVERBOARD!”


“Don’t call out to her,” whispered Polly. “Wait here just a minute,
while I climb down these rocks. This is the way she went, you can see
her tracks.”

“Tracks, on a rocky path,” murmured Ted, helplessly. “Polly, where are
they? I don’t see any?”

“Here, where the grass is trodden down. Now, don’t get frightened. Just
wait for me.” Polly started down the rocky path, and at its base looked
around cautiously. Not a living soul was in sight anywhere, but even
while she hesitated, she saw Sue’s form come apparently out of the
ground itself over in a rocky enclosure, well sheltered from wind and
wave. Polly turned, called to the rest to follow, and ran ahead to join
Sue.

“It’s a camp,” Sue said excitedly, as she reached her. “And there’s a
real cave, Polly, and a bed in it, and dishes, and the bed’s just been
slept in, and there’s a coffee pot in there that’s still warm.”

“Sue, I never knew you were such a splendid detective,” Polly answered,
warmly. “Let’s drink the pirates’ coffee right away.”

But Ruth and Kate arrived and advised caution until they found out just
what the mystery was.

“It’s probably only some fishermen,” said Nancy, in her matter-of-fact
way. “Father’d be sure to know if any strangers had arrived and settled
here.”

Polly started for the entrance to the cave.

“There may be somebody in there,” Ruth cried. “Please don’t go in.”

“There’s nobody at home,” Sue replied. “I’ve been in.”

It was a good-sized cave, Polly saw, as soon as she ventured into it.
The floor was of finest sand. There was a bed, a very primitive bed, but
yet a bed, made of branches of pine with blankets spread over them. Some
boxes served as seats, and a ledge of rock as a shelf for some dishes.
But Polly’s quick eyes noticed a couple of suitcases in one corner and
sundry articles of clothing lying around such as no consistent smuggler
or pirate would have deigned to don. When she came out into the sunlight
and faced the girls, she was smiling.

“Do fishermen around here have books and magazines lying around in
caves?” she asked. “There are all sorts of such things in this cave.”

“Well, anyway, Polly,” Kate put in, in her level-headed way, “whatever
they have in there, we have no business going in and rummaging around,
and they’ll very soon tell us so if they appear suddenly. I move that we
vanish.”

The motion was carried unanimously, and the girls climbed the path back
to the Castle.

“We can watch anyone who comes, from up here,” Polly said. “They’ll see
the yachts anyway, and know they have visitors.”

“Maybe they have already,” Kate suggested. “Maybe that’s what ails them.
Maybe they’ve seen us and have run away to hide.”

“Oh, such a hive of maybes,” laughed Ruth. “Still, maybe it’s so,
Polly.”

The idea gave them fresh courage, and they hurried to the Castle, and
hunted all over its ruins, enthusiastic over the outlook for adventure.
But even when they had reached the topmost point and the entire island
lay before them, not a sign of life did they detect. Save for their own
pretty fleet, riding at anchor down in the cove, the shore was deserted,
and not a single sound disturbed the air.

“I think whoever it is has gone fishing for his breakfast,” Nancy said,
decidedly. “And it’s probably only some of the boys from the summer
cottages or the hotel, having a little camp for a day or two. Let’s go
along as if nothing had happened, and if they should come back, we’ll
just tell them we came over to see the island and didn’t know it had any
people on it.”

It seemed to be the only sensible thing to do, so the girls agreed. As
Ruth said, in these days it was hardly likely there were pirates on the
island, and a party of ordinary campers wouldn’t eat them up or open
fire on them from any secret place. So in spite of their curiosity and
natural uneasiness, the girls managed to spend a happy day. They dug
clams and roasted them down on the beach for lunch, and even borrowed a
few things from the cave outfit, pepper and salt, some forks, and an
extra bottle of Chili sauce. With a plentiful supply of crackers, and
all that Aunty Welcome had put into their lunch boxes besides, it was a
feast. After it was over, the girls returned what they had borrowed, and
placed a conspicuous sign on them, written by Polly:

    “Dear Smuggler:

    “Thank you for your pepper, salt and Chili sauce. We leave in
    return this jar of Aunty Welcome’s marmalade, and half a nut
    cake, and six crullers, and some hermits. Do you know what
    hermits are? We thought it would be appropriate to give you
    some.”

“Put in an invitation for him to come over and see us,” Ted added, after
the six had stood off and regarded the sign critically. So Polly added
down at the bottom,

    “And we should be happy to entertain you at any time at the
    yacht club on Lost Island.”

“But what if he should come?” asked Isabel.

“He won’t,” retorted Polly, happily. “Smugglers aren’t a bit sociable.
But if he should, we’ll survey him in the offing, and if he comes in a
long, low rakish looking craft, we’ll all take to our heels, and run at
once for Fair Havens. This is what grandfather would say was a courtly
and polite thing to do after we had taken his Chili sauce, and it really
was extra nice.”

Later Kate climbed to the top of the ruined tower again, and returned,
after making a careful observation.

“When you were in the cave, Polly, did it seem to grow larger towards
the interior?”

“I think so. I could stand up in it easily, and it arched at the back.”

“I don’t think it’s a cave at all. I was on a direct line with it up in
the tower from the place where I stood, and I’m wondering if it isn’t a
passage cut through to the tower to make a way of escape at some time.”

“Kate, I never thought that you were a romancer,” laughed Polly. “If it
had been Isabel, we wouldn’t have been surprised, but for you—” she
shook her head doubtfully. “I shouldn’t wonder if there were sea chests
of gold, and all sorts of loot hidden away in there, but I’m not going
in after them. Come on, girls. It’s after five, and the wind will die
down soon.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to beat back against it, anyway,” Isabel
said. “It’s blowing this way from the Knob instead of towards it.”

“Oh, we’ll get back some way,” Polly led the way down the rocks to the
shore, and the rest followed. But it took some time to gather up the
shells and seaweed they had collected, so that when they were ready to
start the sun was sloping well down in the west, towards the back of
Bald Bluff on the ocean shore.

Crullers had a hard time getting started. The other girls were well
along on their course, before she left the shelter of the Cove, and even
then, she failed to catch the puff of wind that should have carried her
towards the inlet, where Polly said, they would tack, and cut across the
bay in a triangle.

“I don’t see how you can do it, Polly,” Kate said doubtfully.

“The wind will change when the tide comes in,” Polly called. “We’ll be
all right.”

“Oh, Polly, look at Crullers,” Sue cried, all at once, as she happened
to glance back over her shoulder. “She’s off the course, and making for
the open channel.”

The yachts were spread out like a line of geese, one behind the other,
and Crullers’ was last of all. Polly stood up, one hand on her tiller,
and looked back. Crullers was waving wildly and shouting something to
them, but the wind carried her voice the other way. And the little,
broad-keeled “cat” was taking her own pleasure, headed merrily for the
open channel.

“Crullers, sit down and steer,” shouted Polly.

“I can’t,” cried Crullers, helplessly, “the wooden thing in the handle
part of it’s broken.”

“Now what does she mean by that, the little lubber,” thought Polly. “It
must be the pintle bolt. I’m glad she’s got three ring buoys in the
locker.”

The other girls were dazed and couldn’t think what to do. Polly
slackened her sail, and put about. As she passed the others, she called
to them to keep along as they were and she would look after Crullers.

“I don’t see what she’s making all that noise about,” Sue exclaimed, as
they heard Crullers calling to them, frantically. “That boat of hers
wouldn’t sink if you jumped on it, and she’s got all those life
preservers packed away in the lockers, and the buoys too. There’s no
danger at all. She’s just scared.”

But suddenly there came a sound from the channel that made their blood
chill, the long, hollow boom of a steamer’s signal.

“Polly! Polly! Polly!” cried poor Crullers, in agony, and then they saw
her drop down in the boat, and cover her face with her hands.

“It’s the _City of Portland_ coming in, Polly,” Kate shouted, with her
hands up to her lips.

Polly shook her curls out of her face and nodded. “I’ll get her all
right,” she called back.

One hand held the tiller firm and steady, the other had loosened the
main sheet, and held it so as to get the benefit of every breath of
wind. Her head was bending forward, her eyes half closed like the
Captain’s, as they watched the squat little catboat ahead with Crullers
crouching it.

The big boat whistled again, sharp long calls of direction, of which not
one of the girls understood the meaning. Crullers stood up.

“Sit down,” called Polly, “sit down, and steady your boat, you little
goose. Hold her off to windward, Crullers, not that way, towards the
island, towards the island! Oh, can’t you hear anything? Loosen the main
sheet, that rope right there at the end of your boom, and let the wind
swing her about. Oh, dear, can’t you do what I say, Crullers?”

Crullers’ fingers fumbled over the main sheet. They were out in the
channel now, with the Point of the Sickle lying at their right hand, and
the lighthouse and station in plain sight. Just as Polly set her teeth,
and tried to make straight for the other boat, the great white steamer,
_City of Portland_, hove into sight, steaming up the channel. Then
something that Polly had either read or heard flashed through her mind.
A sailing vessel has the right of way. But Crullers did not know that,
and when she saw that monster bearing straight down on her, all her
courage and presence of mind left her. The one thing she did remember
were the ring buoys in the lockers at the stern.

The _Portland_ was blowing its whistle steadily now, and Polly called as
she came near, “It’s all right, Crullers. They’re holding up to let us
pass. Keep right along.”

Crullers was ahead, and did not seem to hear her, and just as she felt
sure they would pass safely, she saw Crullers deliberately stand up in
her rocking, unsteady little craft, with her two arms thrust to the
shoulders through a couple of ring buoys, and another held fast in her
hands. Her round, good-tempered face was blanched white, as she turned
towards Polly.

“I’m going to jump, Polly!” she called out shakily.

“Don’t you dare to!” Polly cried, but her words had no effect. They were
right in the path of the _Portland_, and under her great bow. The
Captain was shouting something to them, as he leaned out over the
bridge. Bells seemed to be ringing, and the rails were lined with tense,
startled faces. Polly could hear some women screaming up on deck. The
engines had stopped on the big boat, and she was drifting easily with
the incoming tide towards the inlet. It seemed in that second of time as
if everybody on the steamer was shouting out something different as
Crullers jumped into the water.

There was hardly any sea on. The bay was beautiful in the soft golden
glow before sunset. The tide had turned, and was coming in in long easy
swells like the waves from the wake of a steamer. It seemed to Polly
afterwards, when she looked back to that time, as if she saw everything
in the visible universe in those few seconds. The big boat standing off,
and booming, booming at them distractedly; Crullers’ little catboat,
righting itself gallantly after her jump, and starting off on its own
hook towards the Point; Crullers herself, looking so comical in spite of
the tragic danger, with the ring buoys around her arms like a new
fashion in sleeve puffs, and the third one hugged to her breast as she
slipped under the water; and most vivid of all, perhaps, the Life Saving
Station, where they evidently had been seen, for somebody was running
back up the beach towards the low white building.

Then suddenly she saw Crullers’ taffy- pigtails, lank and
drenched, and her face dripping and deathlike, as she came up. It seemed
the easiest and most natural thing in the world to lean over and catch
hold of the pigtails. Polly never thought of doing anything else, but as
she did so, and Crullers caught hold of the _Tidy Jane_ and was helped
and pulled over into its cockpit, a great, swelling cheer went up from
the decks of the _Portland_, and the captain swung off his cap in salute
to the little Commodore of the Yacht Club, as she tumbled her drenched
mate on the locker, and went back to steering.

The _Jane_ came about handsomely, and the engines on the steamer started
to throb. Then Polly glanced up, with one of her rare, frank smiles that
won her so many friends, and waved her hand back to all the faces that
seemed to smile at her, and at the big, burly Maine captain, who laughed
as he shouted down to her:

“Well done, mate, well done!”




                              CHAPTER XIII

                        POLLY’S “CURRENT EVENTS”


“Put it down in the log book, Kate, under the head of current events,”
Polly said that night, as she sat beside Crullers’ couch, and they all
discussed the rescue. “And don’t say heroism again. It wasn’t anything
of the kind. It was just plain common sense.”

“That’s so,” agreed the Captain, smiling shrewdly. “It’s an awful
embarrassing thing, this being a hero, Miss Polly. I’ve had to go
through it several times, more or less, whenever I happened to haul some
landlubber out of deep water, and I can sympathize with you.”

“Just the same, Captain, you’ll never know how glad I was to see that
life-boat round the Point. The tide was setting me at my wits’ end, and
I never would have got the _Tidy Jane_ back by myself.”

“She’s powerful skittish once she gets the smell of the open sea,” the
Captain remarked.

“Yes, and they helped me get the salt water out of Crullers too,” added
Polly. “I’ll bet a cooky she won’t like salt for a year, after that one
good taste of it.”

Crullers laughed feebly. But the other girls could not make light of the
affair. It had seemed altogether too serious and tragic, when they had
watched those two frail, white-winged little boats drifting straight in
the face of danger, and then Crullers’ frantic leap into the sea, and
the coming of the life-boat around the Point. It all savored too much of
real tragedy, Kate and Ruth said, and it ought to teach them a good
lesson.

The life savers had picked up Crullers’ boat midway down the channel,
and had towed the _Tidy Jane_ in under bare poles. Polly and Crullers
had been taken up to the Station, Crullers, dripping and half
unconscious, carried in the arms of the Captain, while Polly walked
along the narrow boardwalk behind them, and the rest of crew followed,
five men altogether. At the Station, Crullers had a personal experience
with “first aid” methods, for she had not kept her mouth closed when she
had gone under, and as the Captain said she had “shipped a sea.”

The other girls returned to Lost Island in their boats, as soon as
possible, and prepared Aunty Welcome; then walked back on the shore road
to meet the Captain when he came along carrying Crullers wrapped up like
a papoose in a real, United States Life Saving Corps blanket.

That night Mrs. Carey had come over to the island cottage to make sure
that Crullers was doing well. Aunty Welcome had dosed her with hot
ginger tea, which as Polly said was punishment enough in itself with a
July thermometer climbing toward the nineties. She had also had a warm
mustard bath, and lay wrapped in a blanket on a couch in the
living-room. The Captain sat on a camp stool, and whittled away at a new
pintle bolt for Crullers’ rudder. He said nothing all the time the girls
told of the day’s adventures to Mrs. Carey, not even when Polly said she
was glad the life boat had come after them, but he nodded his head
slowly.

“Aren’t you going to scold us any?” asked Polly, finally. “We should
have started for home sooner, and maybe we didn’t manage the yachts just
right. It was a queer wind that came with the tide. It blew from the
southwest—”

“West by sou’west,” corrected the Captain gravely.

“Yes, sir,” Polly agreed. “So we had to beat our way back criss cross
over the bay to catch any good from it.”

“You needn’t explain,” the Captain shook his head, his eyes twinkling
under their shaggy brows. “I’m ashamed of you all, getting the crew out
on a day when there was hardly a ripple on the bay.”

“We didn’t call for help,” Polly pleaded. “They must have heard the
_Portland’s_ whistle. I am sorry about it. The captain of the _Portland_
must think we’re a nice lot of yacht lubbers. More likely he’s calling
us yacht lubbers.”

“I met him at the hotel to-night when I went down to telephone,” said
the Captain, slowly.

“Oh, what did he say about us?” the girls broke in. “Please tell us,
Captain Carey.”

“He said that the girl in the _Tidy Jane_ deserved a medal for the way
she handled her boat, and saved the little fat one.” The Captain’s face
was quite serious.

“I didn’t do anything to Crullers except pull her over into the _Jane_,”
said Polly, blushing. “She’d have kept afloat anyway till the life boat
reached her. She was floating lovely with all those little buoys on
her.”

“I was not,” protested Crullers, indignantly. “I was just full of salt
water. I swallowed gallons of it when I went under that first time.”

Polly was watching the Captain’s countenance as the barometer of his
opinion on the matter, but it betrayed little. He listened to all they
had to say; then finally leaned back and closed his big jack knife. Mrs.
Carey had gone out into the kitchen to confer with Aunty Welcome about
the need of a doctor.

“I was expecting it,” said the Captain at last. “I’ve been telling all
along, to Tom, and Nancy, and mother, that there’d be some doings pretty
soon, and they came a little sooner than I expected. You’d better not go
sailing about too much after this unless you’re sure of yourselves. For
if you can get all tangled up like that on a fair day, where would you
be in a sudden squall? I’ll expect now every time we get a good breath
of wind to look over the bay and see one of the yachts floating around
bottom up, and a couple of you youngsters hanging on to it by your
eyelids. Now mind what I say, keep down at this end of the bay, out of
the channel and away from the other craft, till you know enough to get
out of the way. What were you doing out there anyhow, trying to round
the Point?”

The girls had nearly forgotten their adventure at Smugglers’ Cove in the
newer excitement of the accident, but now they told of the day there,
and of the mystery, until the Captain leaned back his head and laughed
over it.

“Now, who do you suppose it can be, Captain?” asked Isabel and Ted in
one breath.

“Is there a passage from that cave up to the old ruins?” Kate added.

“They were footprints with shoes on,” Sue exclaimed.

“Were they indeed?” The Captain laughed till he coughed, and wiped the
tears out of his eyes. “Well, now, you take my advice and keep off the
island, for I’m thinking it’s inhabited.”

“Do you know who lives there?” Polly leaned forward to meet his glance,
and the Captain slowly winked, oh, but so wisely and cautiously.

“I am saying nothing,” he told them. “Can you hear me?”

Mrs. Carey appeared in the doorway just then.

“Come along home, father,” she said. “We’ve decided not to get any
doctor. I guess Welcome’s about right. She says they frets around, and
muddles things up, and gets in the way, and she can mix up just as queer
a mess as they can any time. I don’t think the child is hurt much,
anyhow. She’s pretty well scared, and salted, and that’s about all.
Polly, I’ll send over some fresh string beans and a mess of peas in the
morning by Nancy, and Tom’s going to the village if you need anything.”

“Aren’t they good to us?” Polly said, as she came back after saying
goodbye and watching the gleam of the lantern swing along the hummocks
over to the shore road. “I thought he’d scold us hard.”

“We deserved it,” Kate answered, calmly, as she stuffed a couple of sofa
cushions back of her head, and clasped her hands on them. “Here we’ve
stopped a steamer, excited all her passengers and crew, made the
life-savers hustle out in fair weather, and generally let everybody
around Eagle Bay know what a lot of lubbers we are at handling yachts,
all because Crullers’ pintle bolt got twisted and she took a jump
overboard. It’s lucky, Polly, the Admiral isn’t here. He’d send us all
back to Queen’s Landing in a jiffy.”

“We didn’t mean to make so much trouble,” Polly answered cheerily, as
she shook up Crullers’ pillow, and got her a glass of fresh water for
the night. “I’m only thankful it was no worse. Let’s make the best of
it. Let’s make an interesting invalid out of Crullers. Aunty Welcome
says she must stay in bed to-morrow till all danger is over of chills or
fever or stomach upsetness. I’m going to loan her my pink kimono to wear
over her nightgown, and we’ll bring in some wild roses from the shore
road, and entertain her with a—oh, girls, I know what.” Polly stopped
short, her eyes sparkling as they always did when she had a sudden idea.
“Let’s give her a ‘Sea Social.’ We were going to have one some evening,
but now we’ll do it to-morrow afternoon. We can get the Vaughan girls
over. Have Tom leave word at the hotel for them, and Nancy will come,
and we’ll all sing sea songs and recite sea poetry, and we’ll have a
lunch right out of the sea, fried flounder.”

“I wish we could have crab _a la_ Newburg,” Isabel remarked musingly.
Polly went to the open window, and stretched out her arms seaward, as
she sang:

                    “Flounder, flounder in the sea,
                      Come, I pray, and talk to me.
                    For my wife, Dame Isabel,
                      Wishes what I fear to tell.”

She turned just in time to catch the pillow that Isabel sent flying
across the room, and they all sat down to make up a program for
Crullers’ “Sea Social.”

It was a great success. Even Mrs. Carey came over, with a fresh
gingerbread and a pail of rich cream.

“They go mighty nice together,” she said, smilingly, and the girls
agreed with her before the feast was over.

Dorothy and Bess made the trip across the bay in the _Nixie_, to call on
the invalid, and lend their share to the social side of the afternoon.
Crullers had never been the guest of honor anywhere before, but she was
that day, as she sat up on the couch in the living-room, with Polly’s
long pink kimono around her, and pink wild roses fastened on each side
her braids, above her ears, in Japanese fashion.

The glee club played all the sea songs they could remember, and all
hands piped up merrily from “Nancy Lee” to “Anchored.” Then Polly
announced that the best part of the program was yet to come. Each of the
girls would render her favorite poem about the sea, and Crullers had to
start the ball rolling.

“I only know the one about the ‘Schooner Hesperus,’ Polly,” she said,
shyly, “and I like it best of all.”

“Say it, then,” Polly told her. “We like it, too.”

Then Kate recited “The Three Fishers,” her slow, contralto tones and
rather dreamy air well fitting themselves to the sad old verses. Isabel
gave “Annabel Lee” most touchingly, and Polly ordered a quick song in
happier vein to offset the sadness of the two. So after a rousing “Billy
was a Bo’sun,” Ted got up, and declaimed the only poem on the sea she
knew, one she had had to memorize at Calvert Hall as a punishment for
putting the house cat into Fraulein’s shirtwaist box, and scaring her
nearly into a fainting fit (Fraulein, not the cat).

              “The mountains look on Marathon,
                And Marathon looks on the sea,
              And sitting there a while alone,
                I dreamed that Greece might yet be free.”

Polly always liked to watch Ted’s face when she came to that verse. She
would lift her chin, and her gray eyes would flash, and her fists
clench. At Calvert Hall Ted had always been the most successful
“declaimer,” as Miss Calvert termed it, and she “fixed Greece good and
plenty” this time; so Sue said when it was over.

Dorothy declared she didn’t know any poem about the ocean, but she would
sing “Sweet and Low” if they liked.

“Not too low, please,” Crullers said, eagerly, “or I won’t hear all the
words away over here.”

“I declare, Crullers,” laughed Kate. “We should have nicknamed you
Stubs, for if there’s a possible thing for you to stumble over, you do
it.”

Polly recited her favorite, “The Chambered Nautilus,” and as she came to
the last verse Mrs. Carey closed her eyes and smiled, her hand up to her
face, as the grand old words rang out.

             “Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul
             As the swift seasons roll.
               Leave thy low vaulted past,
               Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
               Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
                 Till thou at length art free,
             Leaving thine outgrown shell,
                 By life’s unresting sea.”

“Oh, I love that,” Nancy cried, her blue eyes sparkling as Polly
finished. “Father would, too.”

“Now, there’s just Bess, and Mrs. Carey, and you left, Nancy,” Kate
said. “Come, Bess, do something.”

“Oh, I don’t know anything,” Bess said, shyly.

“Yes, she does, too,” Dorothy laughed. “Make her say the poem from
‘Alice in Wonderland’ about the whiting and the snail.”

All the girls added their persuasion and Bess agreed. She was only
thirteen, and small for her age, with a mass of yellow, square-cut curls
around her mischievous face, and she had plenty of freckles. The
piquant, teasing look on her face was delicious as she asked,
plaintively, coaxingly,

    “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the
       dance,
    Oh, will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you, won’t
       you join the dance?”

“Now, Mrs. Carey and Nancy are next,” Kate said, as soon as the applause
had stopped, and Crullers leaned back on her pillow flushed and radiant
over the merriment.

“Well, now, we didn’t expect to speak any pieces,” Mrs. Carey answered,
her pleasant motherly face beaming around at them with love and
kindliness. She used to say that she’d got so in the habit of mothering
the two children and the Captain that it was just second nature to her
to mother anything in sight. “I don’t know any poetry, and neither does
Nancy, but if you like I’ll read you something that we think’s the
finest poetry ever was written about the sea, and then Nancy can sing
her favorite hymn, ‘Pull for the Shore.’”

She stepped back into the kitchen and spoke to Aunty Welcome, and
presently returned with the latter’s Bible in her hand. Sitting there in
the cool, cosy room, whose windows all opened to the sea, she read that
beautiful Psalm that both she and the Captain loved to read aloud, the
One Hundred and Fourth, with its grand old song about He “who layeth the
beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds His chariot:
who walketh upon the wings of the wind: who maketh His angels spirits,
and His ministers a flame of fire.”

Then Nancy’s clear, sweet voice fairly made the little room ring with
the hymn she loved:

                    “Light in the darkness, sailor,
                      Day is at hand,
                    See o’er the foaming billow,
                      Fair haven land.”

After it was over, and they had all gone excepting the yacht club girls
themselves, Crullers said she thought it was the happiest time she had
ever had, and the next day she was able to “rise and shine,” as Aunty
Welcome told her, and take up life again.

Things were very quiet at the island for a week after the mishap in the
bay. The girls restricted their sailing to the west end of the bay, down
towards Fair Havens, and Polly was busy finding out how to manage
yachts, keep them in repair, and so on, and she called Tom to account
roundly.

“Just look at these seams in the _Tidy Jane_, Tom,” she said one day,
when they were down at the landing overhauling the boats. “Don’t they
need re-caulking?”

“I guess not,” Tom responded, easily. “Father and I went all over them
last spring, when we did the rest. They’ll swell after they’ve been in
the water a few weeks anyhow. Sometimes when you caulk a boat up too
tight, she’ll spring on you.”

“All right, then, but just look at the paint, will you? It’s fairly
peeling off in some places, Tom. You won’t find any of the Orienta boats
looking like that.”

Tom looked at her, his eyes beginning to twinkle as his father’s did.

“I know what you’re up to,” he laughed. “You’re going to race in the
regatta!”

Polly said nothing, but she kept on her course of fitting out for the
race. The Orienta was to open its club house the first of August for the
regatta season. It had been open as a club house since the first of
June, but officially it welcomed the sailing world from the first of
August until the fifteenth, the day of the first run. Even from the
porch of the little cottage on the Knob, the girls could look across the
bay to where the handsome red and white club house stood midway between
the hotel and the row of summer cottages that straggled along the north
shore all the way to the Inlet. As long as the girls lived on Eagle Bay,
they never knew the name of the little river that rambled down between
the bluffs and mingled with the channel waters. Everyone called it the
Inlet, so they did too.

At one side of the club house was built a tall yacht shed, for the
housing of such boats as were left there in the winter time. The best
ones came up from the south, Dorothy said. Not way down south, but
around Boston harbor, and Long Island, and New York. Her father’s big
sloop would be the flag ship at the regatta, she told them, for he was
the commodore of the challenging club.

“They don’t have a flag ship at a regatta,” Tom had interposed. “I never
raced in one, but I’ve watched them ever since I was knee high to a
toadstool. There’s just the racing yachts, and the judge’s boat, and
they divide them into different classes.”

“I thought that was what they called it,” Dorothy said, in her pretty,
half serious way, and Tom walked away, grinning blandly over the ways of
girl people in general.

The Admiral had written that he was surely coming north regatta week,
and Polly felt a growing emulation in her breast, a feeling of pride in
the Polly Page Yacht Club, against this mighty rival.

“Let’s go over there and watch them overhaul their yachts,” she said
finally, the day before the opening; so they tramped around the shore
road to Orienta Point. Almost the first persons they saw were the
Vaughan girls, sitting up on the broad veranda with a lot of ladies and
young girls.

“This looks like a celebration of some kind, girls,” Kate said, merrily.
“We had better be careful.”

The others hesitated for a moment. They were dressed as usual in their
dark blue yachting suits, with white sailor collars, and white duck
knockabout hats to match. Even from where they stood, there was surely a
festive appearance to the club group. But the girls had already seen
them, and came hurrying down the steps to meet them, with outstretched
hands and glad smiles of welcome.

“Oh, I’m so glad you came over at last,” cried Bess. “Mamma wants you
all to come up and join us. To-morrow’s the official guest day, but
mamma’s giving a tea this afternoon to the lady visitors, and we Juniors
are helping pass cake and things. Come up, now, for we’ve just been
telling about how Polly saved Crullers’ life the other night.”

“Oh, but I didn’t,” exclaimed Polly, reddening under her coat of tan.
“Truly, Bess, I didn’t. Crullers, I mean Jane Daphne Adams here, jumped
overboard, and she was floating comfortably with three buoys attached to
her when I helped her into the boat.”

“Well, the captain of the _Portland_ didn’t tell it that way,” Dorothy
said. “He came up to the hotel that evening and told us all about it. He
said that you were the pluckiest girl he had ever seen handle a yacht
alone. Won’t you please come up, and let mamma talk to you about it?
She’s ever so anxious to meet all of you girls from the island camp
anyway, for Bess and I have talked of you so frequently.”

“But we really hadn’t better to-day, had we, Polly?” Ruth’s eyes
questioned Polly. What would Miss Calvert say if she knew six of her
best girls had attended a yacht club afternoon tea in blue duck.

“It’s the correct thing to do,” Bess persisted, laughing at their
perplexity. “The law of yacht clubs gives a tacit membership, papa says,
to all members of other clubs who may be in the neighborhood. And they
can’t always be in party attire, you know.”

“Oh, let’s, Polly,” pleaded Isabel. So Ruth and Polly led the way up the
broad steps to the veranda, with its handsome awnings, potted palms, and
dark green wicker chairs and tables scattered invitingly about.

Mrs. Vaughan welcomed them cordially and introduced them to the other
ladies and a lot of the “Juniors,” girls of their own age, and friends
of Dorothy’s and Bess’s.

“And you are all Southern girls, Dolly tells me,” she said, looking from
one face to the other. “Virginia girls. How did you ever happen to drift
away up on our rocky coast?”

Polly explained how it had all happened, and then she discovered that
Mrs. Vaughan was an old friend of her Aunt Milly, Mrs. Holmes, and knew
the four boy cousins.

“So you must not remain isolated over at the Knob after this, girls,”
she told them at parting, when they had partaken of ice cream, delicate
shrimp and lobster salad sandwiches, and tea. “The Orienta is very gay
during August, and we have a good many Junior functions for our younger
element. I will speak to the Commodore about your club and see that it
is listed for the regatta, and whenever you are able to come over I will
chaperon all of you and see that you get back safely. We have our
touring car up here, and you can all go home in that, you know, any
time.”

“Well, forevermore,” gasped Polly, as they trudged back homeward with
the sunset spreading its glory over the world of land and sea and sky.
“Girls, we have stumbled all unawares into society. Let’s conduct
ourselves as angels. Whatever will grandfather say!”

“Did you notice their dresses?” asked Isabel, her eyes dreamy with rapt
remembrance. “That one which Mrs. Vaughan wore was sheer,
hand-embroidered batiste, and the long coat was of real Irish crochet.”

“I don’t believe she sleeps one bit better than I do,” said Sue,
recklessly.

“But, Sue, did you notice Dorothy’s dress?” persisted Isabel. “It was
white organdie over pale yellow silk that just matched the tea roses in
the pattern. I love clothes that show good taste.”

“Now, Lady Vanitas,” said Polly, reprovingly. “Don’t let your heart
dwell so on raiment. Lilies of the field, you know. It was pretty, and
there you are. We’ve all brought our Commencement Day dresses along for
Sundays, so we’ll freshen them up, and I guess we can go to the ball
without the help of any god-mothers or pumpkins. I don’t feel one bit
bothered over the social side of it, but how can we hold our own in a
regatta, girls? It’s so kind of Mrs. Vaughan to invite us to join them,
isn’t it? How funny our little fifteen-footers will look alongside the
big forty- and sixty-footers.”

“But she said they were going to have special entries for the Junior
events, don’t you remember?” Sue interrupted eagerly. “I don’t see why
we couldn’t enter for them. Dorothy and Bess are going to sail their
yacht, and they say there are five or six others who are going in.”

“Then we will sail ours,” Polly retorted. “I have intended to all along,
but I wanted some encouragement. I wouldn’t race with a great yacht
towering over me like a genii just out of a bottle, but I’ll pit the
_Tidy Jane_ against any yacht of her build along the whole coast of
North America.”

“Hurrah!” Sue threw her cap up into the air. “Wait till you see the
_Patsy D._ come up gallantly in the wind, and grab the Orienta Junior
cup away from all of you.”

It gave them plenty to talk about and plan for, at all events. As Ruth
said the following morning, the summer was not half long enough for all
the things they planned to do. They rose early, any time between five
and six. Nobody except a clam could have slept with the sun coming up
like a great, golden blossom behind Bald Bluff, and the sea running
along the beach with little waves like dancing feet, calling to one to
come and play too.

They tried over and over again to divide each day systematically, but,
as Polly said, “current events tripped them up.” Aunty Welcome protested
that she would do the washing, ironing, cooking, and kitchen work, but
not a tap more; so each took care of her own room, and Polly looked out
for the living-room besides. Sue had chosen the veranda for her special
charge, and she kept it spotless. They had brought along two hammocks,
and had found another one rolled up with the porch mats under a window
seat. The three hung out on the veranda temptingly, and through the long
warm afternoons, when they were not sailing, the girls would sit out
there and make all sorts of decorative things out of the shells in their
collection, while Ruth read aloud. The very week of their arrival, she
had gone across the bay with Nancy in the _Pirate_ and had discovered
the village circulating library.

“I do believe, Grandma,” Polly had said, merrily, when she saw her
returning with a brand new book, “that if you landed on the coast of
South Africa, you’d ask the first gorilla you met, very politely, if he
would please direct you to the nearest circulating library.”

But Ruth refused to be teased about her hobby, so the girls desisted.
She loved books, however, and would have walked all the way to Eastport
in order to get a fresh one. So with her rimless eyeglasses planted
firmly on the bridge of her nose, the nose that turned up ever so little
at the world in anxious inquiry, she smiled placidly at Polly, and
hugged a new volume to her heart every time she went over the bay.

“You’re all ready enough to listen while I read aloud, just the same,”
she told them, when they all settled themselves out on the porch, and
called for the after-dinner reading. No one contradicted her. Polly was
over in her favorite hammock at the southwesterly corner, her lap full
of shells, and some sandpaper, with which she was trying to polish their
outer side. Sue, Isabel, and Crullers leaned against the railing, so
that their hair would hang over and dry in the sunlight. Only two of the
girls wore caps when in bathing, and Aunty Welcome declared that their
hair would be fairly pickled before they reached home.

“It’s ‘Treasure Island’ this time, girls,” Ruth announced.

“Smugglers’ Cove,” murmured Sue, mischievously. “See what an effect it
had on her, oh, dear; oh, dear.”

Ruth uttered a sudden exclamation, and slipped into the house.

“There was another parcel in our mail box to-day,” she said, as she came
back. “I forgot to give it to you.”

“This makes the fourth,” Polly declared, taking it from her, and
handling it gingerly. “And they all come from Smugglers’ Cove. The first
one had new magazines in it, and some patent fish hooks that Sue ran off
with, and we haven’t seen since.”

“The second was chocolate mints.”

“Oh, my, weren’t they good?” Crullers added.

“Third, a full and complete Manual on Conchology and Sea-life, suitable
for young persons marooned on an isle,” concluded Polly, returning with
a pair of scissors to cut the twine. “I wonder what this is?”

It was addressed, as the other parcels had been, simply to “The Yacht
Club, Lost Island, Eagle Bay, Maine.” Polly opened it while the rest
stood around. One wrapping after another was removed, and finally a box
appeared. When this was opened, there lay a microscope, a fine one, with
several different removable lenses for observing specimens.

“Well, what a darling, tasty old pirate he is,” exclaimed Polly,
joyously. “He seems to know all our needs. We’ll have to send something
to him in return, girls.”

“I’ll make him a shell portìere to hang in front of his cave,” said
Kate, soberly. Scarcely had she spoken when a strange and unusual sound
broke the stillness of the bay.

“That sounds like a motor boat,” Polly said, instantly. “Maybe it’s the
one from the _Hippocampus_.”

It was surely a motor boat, but not the bright-railed, mahogany-trimmed
one from the _Hippocampus_. This was white, with a high, pointed prow, a
cabin, and a cockpit similar to Nancy’s knockabout. But there the
resemblance ended. The mast had been removed, and a small gasoline
engine provided the power.

“I can see the name on the prow,” called Ted presently. “It’s the
_Natica_.”

“Natica means a sea snail,” Ruth explained, with absent-minded reversion
to lessons, but Polly dropped her shells helter-skelter into the
hammock, and rose.

“I know who it is, girls,” she cried. “That’s our smuggler!”




                              CHAPTER XIV

                     “MR. SMITH OF SMUGGLERS’ COVE”


“Ship, ahoy!” called out the lone occupant of the boat, as he waved his
hand to them, and came alongside the landing. The girls saw at once that
he was an elderly man, with a square-cut, iron-gray beard that curled
upward at its edges, and a moustache. He wore a white sweater and linen
trousers, and that was as far as their observation went at first sight.

“Won’t you come ashore?” called Polly, with cheery hospitality, as she
waved back to him.

“Now, Polly, be careful,” warned Kate. “You don’t know whether he’s
Captain Kidd, or Neptune in disguise, or Andrew Carnegie. He really
looks like all three.” But Polly disregarded the warning. She ran down
the steps, and met the stranger half-way up the little boardwalk from
the landing, after he had moored his boat.

“He has something under his arm, girls,” Sue whispered. “Looks like a
bottle—no, it’s our marmalade jar, all washed up nice and clean. Isn’t
he the tidy old smuggler, though?”

“Good afternoon, young ladies.” As the stranger greeted them, he raised
his cap with a gesture that even the Admiral would have approved of. “I
have come to return the marmalade jar, and to thank you for the treat.
It was the finest I ever ate.”

“You may have more of it if you like,” offered Polly, instantly, with
all her Virginia grace and hospitality to the fore. “We have plenty of
it on hand. And you need not have brought back the jar.”

“But I wanted to, I wanted to.” He smiled around at them through his
rimless eyeglasses, with the friendliest interest. “It gave me a good
excuse for calling. I’ve been wanting to come ever since I saw the first
smoke rise from your chimney.”

“Did you think that perhaps we were pirates too?” laughed Sue.

This “unfortunate remark,” as Isabel called it later, required
explanation, and the girls were only too ready to tell all their
suspicions about the Cove, and its unknown Robinson Crusoe. He listened
to them with the keenest amusement, his dark eyes twinkling under their
“pent-house lids,” as Ruth called the bushy gray eyebrows.

“So you considered me a pirate or a smuggler, did you?” He laughed
richly over the idea, but Polly shook her head.

“Not exactly. We thought you might be. We almost hoped you might be, so
we could find chests of gold in that cave. You see, nobody around here
knows anything about you, or where you came from, or when you came.”

“I came up from the South in a motor boat along the shore,” he replied
promptly, almost happily. “And a rousing good time I had too.”

“But where were you all the time we were on the island, and Crullers
nearly was drowned when she got in the way of the _Portland_?” Polly
leaned forward, her chin on her hand, as she always did when she was
perplexed.

“I had gone away from the island for the day,” he explained. “Up to
Pautipaug Beach. It is about twelve miles along the coast towards Bar
Harbor.”

“Well,” sighed Polly, “we’ve called you the Mystery, and it certainly
suits you, for nobody knows even your name.”

“That’s just what I wanted,” he answered, comfortably. “That’s why I
came here.” He leaned back in the most comfortable chair the club
boasted, and piled cushions behind him, while Ted slipped away to tell
Aunty Welcome of the guest of honor. “I’ve rented Smugglers’ Cove for
the summer for research, yes, that’s a good word, very explanatory and
truthful, for research. And—well, that’s all there is to it.”

There was a dead silence, while each of the girls regarded the mystery
from her own point of view. Nobody questions a guest, not around Queen’s
Landing, Virginia, not even when he is shrouded in mystery, so they gave
it up. But Polly had a brilliant strategic plan occur to her. She would
introduce all of the girls, gracefully, easily. Then he would have to
introduce himself to them in return. It was simple.

“We must introduce ourselves to you, so you can tell one from the
other,” she said. “This is Ruth Brooks. Sometimes we call her Grandma.
She is our instructress in conchology, and also librarian, and acts as
ballast for the entire establishment.”

“Polly, stop using such big words,” laughed Ted. “Polly loves big words.
She told me once that Napoleon and the Admiral always used them, so she
was going to.”

Polly went on merrily. “This is Isabel Moore, our mirror of fashion,
Lady Vanitas. She should have been Solomon’s favorite daughter and
shared his raiment. Kate, look around this way please, because your
Greek profile is your strongest point. It is pure Greek, isn’t it?” she
appealed to their caller, and he nodded delightedly. “Miss Julian is our
club chaperon, and also the ship’s husband for the entire fleet, and
also the Imperial Keeper of the Memory Log. If it were not for her and
for Isabel, the rest of us would be just Girl Fridays on a desert isle.
Jane Daphne Adams, where art thou?” Crullers rose from a hammock, her
hair tousled like a Scotch terrier’s. “Crullers, have you been asleep?”
Polly demanded, and Crullers nodded drowsily. The other girls laughed
mischievously. It was just like Crullers to fall sound asleep at an
important time. But Polly went on just the same. “This is Crullers, or
Jane Daphne Adams, who fell overboard—”

“And woke to find herself famous, while they pumped out the salt water,”
put in Sue, gravely.

“There are two more, Mr. Smuggler Man,” laughed Polly, “but I daren’t
present them. Their names are Ted and Sue, and one is just as bad as the
other.”

“Polly Page!” came an indignant gasp from the living-room, where Ted had
retreated to help Aunty arrange the tea-tray daintily. “Just you wait
till I come out there.”

“I am delighted to meet you all,” the Unknown said heartily. “I am
certain this is the most unique club roster in the world. But you
haven’t introduced yourself.”

“Let me, please,” Ted’s curly red hair showed at the open window. “Miss
Polly Page, of Glenwood, Queen’s Landing, Virginia; Commodore of the
Polly Page Yacht Club, Founder of the Hungry Six, Volunteer Life Saver
of Eagle Bay—let’s see, anything else, girls?”

“Custodian of the Club Chafing Dish,” Sue added.

“Oh, stop, please, girls; I’ll be good, truly,” pleaded the Commodore,
flushing and laughing at the way they had turned the tables on her. All
her strategy had not resulted in the stranger’s revealing his name.

“I am sure we shall be the best of neighbors the rest of the summer.”
The stranger smiled at the circle of eager, girlish faces around him.
“If you will promise to keep me supplied with Virginia marmalade, put up
by Aunty Welcome, as you call her, I will promise you a steady output of
new magazines and books. Is it a bargain?”

“It is,” said the girls, resolutely, and then they remembered the
mysterious parcels that Ruth had brought back from Eastport, and thanked
him for their contents. But suddenly Crullers asked, in a gentle,
interested way, the one question they had all avoided.

“What’s your name?”

“Smith,” replied the stranger, very simply, then he smiled around at
them again in his whimsical, almost mischievous fashion, for there was
frank disappointment on their faces. “There are a great many members of
our family. I should have said Bold Daniel, or Blackbeard, should I
not?”

“Well, we did rather hope you might turn out to be at least a smuggler,”
Polly said, as she took the tea-tray from Ted, and set it down before
their guest on a chair, for tea-tables existed not on Lost Island.
“Won’t you try some of Aunty Welcome’s famous hermits, and sponge cake,
and marmalade, and a cup of tea?”

For over an hour they entertained Mr. Smith of Smugglers’ Cove. He sat
there with them on the porch till the sun went down, chatting happily,
entertaining them with tales of adventure all over the world, and droll
anecdotes that covered forty years of public life. He seemed to the
girls, that first day, to be the most astonishing traveler they had ever
met. He had served in many campaigns. He could tell them a story of the
Civil War, and jump down to Chili with another tale about when he helped
put through the first railroad that crossed the old trails of the Incas.
Then before they could catch their breath, he was describing Egypt when
the Suez Canal was being built, how one night he had watched the funeral
of a little English baby, the child of one of the chief engineers.

“There was no coffin for it, no procession, nothing but the young,
fair-haired English girl-mother standing on the shore, and a tall,
bare-legged Arab, carrying the little form in his arms wrapped in the
British flag, as he crossed over with the consul to the ‘Isle of the
Sleepers,’ as the Arabs called their cemetery.”

“Oh, tell us some more,” pleaded Ruth and the rest, as he paused.

“Let me see,” he would lean back his head, and think of something else,
his eyes twinkling with the pleasure of it all. “Did I tell you about
the time I took tea with the king of Masailand in West Africa? Didn’t I?
And he gave me a sack of purest ivory for a paper of pins?”

So he talked on, until the last rim of the sun dipped behind the purple
hills in the west, and he started up.

“Bless my heart and soul, I must be going,” he exclaimed. “I expect the
pirates to-night.”

The girls laughed, and Polly sighed contentedly.

“You’ve traveled everywhere, haven’t you?” she asked.

“Not quite.” He smiled down at her from behind his thick curly beard. “I
have yet to see Glenwood, Queen’s Landing, Virginia.”

“And we’d just love to have you see it too,” responded Polly with quick
southern warmth. “It’s the dearest spot of all, we think.”

After the motor boat had passed from sight around the Knob, the girls
looked at one another in perplexity.

“Now, who on earth can he be?” asked Ruth. “For he must be somebody
special, or he never would have traveled all over the world, in every
place where interesting things have happened for years and years. I
wonder who he is.”

“Just Mr. Smith,” said Polly, shaking her head. “But I think he is a
mystery, girls. We’ll ask the Captain about him.”

“There’s one thing certain,” Kate added. “He’s a good neighbor to have
handy.”

Before a week had passed, even Aunty Welcome agreed with the verdict.
Mr. Smith of Smugglers’ Cove was surely a desirable neighbor. Books and
magazines found their way to the house, as well as fishing tackle that
made Tom’s devices look antiquated. Several times he presented the girls
with a fine catch of mackerel that was served in Welcome’s best Southern
style, and Mr. Smith always stayed to partake of the feast.

“I met your grandfather, the Rear-Admiral, Miss Polly, a few years ago,
at a Naval banquet,” he said one day, “and do you know, the President
paid us each a compliment. He said the Rear-Admiral was the handsomest
man present, and that I was the most necessary to the nation. And the
Admiral and I confided to each other later that we would willingly
exchange places.”

“Now, Polly, did you hear what he said to-day?” Ruth asked in a puzzled
tone, after he had gone. “Who can he be? The most necessary to the
nation.”

Polly shook her head.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I like him just as he is. If he should
turn out to be somebody very, very famous, he wouldn’t seem to belong to
us at all.”

The Orienta Club opened its season with a “hop” for the Juniors, and a
reception for the older members, and an invitation found its way to Lost
Island.

“Miss Calvert would say we should not go unless we were chaperoned,
Polly,” Kate said, doubtfully.

“You are our chaperon. You are nearly nineteen, dignified and
responsible. We don’t need any other.” And Polly went serenely along
with her preparations.

“This is partly a business affair,” she explained. “In outdoor sports
strict rules all tumble down, I mean social rules. We’re just the
members of one yacht club accepting the hospitality of another club.
Ruth, don’t pull your hair back so tight. It makes your eyebrows look
like a Japanese girl’s on a fan. Fluff it all out at the sides. Here, I
will.”

And Ruth obediently sat down, while Polly’s deft fingers took all the
primness and straight lines out of her hair.

Tom had promised to drive them over to the club house in the Captain’s
old-fashioned carry-all. He came along the shore road about seven, and
sent up a long “Ahoy!” across the sand.

“I wish Nancy could go, too,” Sue exclaimed, suddenly. “She’d love to.”

“Well, Sue, why couldn’t you have thought of it before the last minute,”
Polly laughed. She stood still for a minute, and then said in the tone
of decision all the girls had learned to know, “Why, of course Nancy can
go along with us. She’s a member of our club. Not a resident member, but
nevertheless she is a member, and our ‘coach’ in all nautical
knowledge.”

“Would your mother let her go, Tom?” asked Kate, practically. Tom
grinned happily, and hitched his one suspender up higher.

“Sure she would,” he answered. “And Nancy’s got a best dress too. It’s
white with little blue flowers on it, awful pretty.”

Very sweet and fresh Nancy looked in that blue and white sprigged
muslin, when she stood in the doorway of the Carey cottage and kissed
her mother good-by, while the girls waited for her. It was her very
first real “party,” as she said, and her cheeks were rosy with
excitement, and her blue eyes shining. Every year she had gone over to
the Orienta with Tom to stand down on the shore and look at the
gayly-lighted verandas and happy throng, had watched the other children
dancing and playing games, and had longed to join them.

“I can’t dance though, Polly,” she said now, as they approached the big
white club house with its verandas all hung with Japanese lanterns and
festoons of real flowers.

“Oh, yes, you can, too,” Polly assured her. “You can dance a reel. Even
a telegraph pole could dance a reel, Nancy. And we girls will dance with
you. That’s the way we used to do at Miss Calvert’s.”

Dorothy and Bess were on the lookout for them, and came down to meet
them.

“We’re so glad you’ve come,” they cried, happily. “Because we’ve got a
real guest of honor from Washington. He’s a friend of papa’s, and he’s
the greatest naturalist in the country. Papa calls him the citizen of
the world, for he loves all the world, and has been over it ever so many
times. Papa says he holds it right in his hand, and pats it. Isn’t that
funny?”

“The greatest naturalist in America,” Kate repeated. “From Washington?”

“Smith!” exclaimed Ruth, suddenly, “Smith!”

“Penryhn Smith,” added Polly, while the Vaughan girls looked at them
with curiosity fairly bubbling out of their lips.

“Why? Do you all know him already?” asked Bess.

“Yes, we all know him well,” laughed Polly. “Come and see.”

They hurried up the broad flight of steps leading to the main floor of
the club-house. Ruth reached over, and squeezed Polly’s hand. She was
fairly treading on air. To think that their smuggler should have turned
out to be Dr. Penryhn Smith of the Institute at Washington. Naturalist
he was, yes, but more than that, they knew. Statesman, explorer, and
most of all, perhaps, the Admiral had told them, he was a lover of all
mankind, a lover of life in all its forms. He was the type of man who
could hold a city audience entranced at a lecture, then turn and kneel
beside a little child to show it the miracle of being in the wild flower
it had just picked. Polly knew how dearly the Admiral valued his
friendship, how Miss Calvert had taught them to revere his name, and she
felt doubly happy over this disclosure of the Smuggler’s identity.

The club house seemed to be filled with guests that night. Juniors, and
fathers and mothers of Juniors, and the people from the hotel and the
summer cottages who had been invited. The girls were swept into the
middle of it all before they could fairly catch their breath. And it
seemed to them as if everywhere they caught the murmur, “Doctor Smith!”

“We might have known there was more to it than Smith,” whispered Sue.

Polly said nothing, but she was doing a lot of thinking, and finally
when she saw Mrs. Vaughan and the Commodore standing at the head of the
long room, there was the smuggler himself beside them, clad in white
flannels, and his eyes twinkling merrily, as he caught sight of the
eight white-clad girls with Dorothy and Bess.

Mrs. Vaughan started to present them kindly, one by one, to the guest of
honor, but Dr. Smith laughed and explained.

“I’m afraid, Mrs. Vaughan, that you are too late with your kind offices.
These young ladies have been close neighbors of mine, and have been very
good to me.”

“But I don’t think I understand, Doctor,” said Mrs. Vaughan; “I thought
you only arrived from Pautipaug Beach to-day.”

“I did, I did,” answered the Doctor, happily. “I came from down the
shore in the _Natica_ at five-thirty, to be exact, from the hotel at
Pautipaug, but I stopped off at my secret hiding-place. You didn’t know
I had one, did you, Mrs. Vaughan? Don’t tell the Commodore, for he still
believes in me. Nobody knows about it except these young ladies and
Captain Carey.”

“Does the Captain know?” exclaimed Polly.

“Yes. It was through him I rented Smugglers’ Island for the summer. I
can make the trip back and forth in the _Natica_ and study in peace
there. I tried to keep under cover but Miss Polly, here, ferreted me
out, and has kept me alive since on orange marmalade.”

“If we had suspected for one minute that you were famous, we wouldn’t
have given you a bit,” said Polly severely. “I think you owe the whole
club an apology.”

“I am asking it now,” the Doctor returned. “Mrs. Vaughan, you see how
they order me around? If I had been a pirate or a smuggler, they would
have respected me.”

“Oh, I think they will forgive you, Doctor,” said Mrs. Vaughan, as she
smiled around at the happy, girlish faces surrounding the Doctor. “In
fact, we shall all have to, for it is a joke on little Eagle Bay. I was
reading only last week, in a New York paper, that the eminent
naturalist, Dr. Penrhyn Smith, had vanished as usual, and it was thought
he had slipped south on a trip through the Amazonian wilderness. And all
the while you were right here on Smugglers’ Island.”

“But quite near the Amazonian wilderness just the same,” the Doctor
added, teasingly. “They are all girl warriors over on the Knob, Mrs.
Vaughan. You don’t know them as I do.”

“Why did you go there to live?” asked Crullers, in her point-blank way.

“It’s a state secret,” replied the Doctor, gravely. “I am on the trail
of a certain polypus, and if I told you all about it, you’d hunt after
it yourself, and you might possibly find it, and take all the credit
away from me.”

“What were those queer tracks in the sand around the mouth of the cave?”
asked Kate. “Like a three-legged crane. We saw them the day we were at
the Cove.”

The Doctor smiled.

“I carry a camera with me,” he said, amusedly. “Those were the tracks of
the tripod, a rare beast in captivity.”

“And does the cave really go clear through the island to the castle?”
asked Ruth, eagerly.

“It does. If you will come over, you may go through it. But you won’t
find any treasure or loot there. Plenty of old barrels, and boxes, but
nothing in them. The pirates must have made a clean sweep that last
night.”

“Isn’t he splendid?” exclaimed Kate, as they gave place to all the
people who were waiting to be presented.

“And his flannels are so becoming,” added Isabel, thoughtfully. “Do you
know, girls, I have found out something awfully queer. All of the really
‘great’ people I ever met are much simpler and pleasanter and more
natural, than the little, everyday people who fuss around, and snub each
other, and just live and grow fat on trouble. Isn’t that so, Polly?”

“Well, there are ‘deceptions’ to every rule, you know Aunty Welcome
says,” laughed Polly. “I wouldn’t say positively, but I do think that
the Doctor is a darling.”




                               CHAPTER XV

                             THE PEARL FEST


The following day was Sunday, the fourth they had spent on Lost Island.
The nearest church was two and a half miles around the bay shore road,
at Eastport, but services were held in the open air stadium in the pine
grove back of the hotel. The cottagers and shore people attended here,
and the girls had been glad to go also. They tried to persuade Aunty
Welcome to accompany them, but she steadfastly refused to budge along
that bay shore road until she left for good.

“I’se hyar, and I knows I’se hyar, and I ain’t a-going to trust myself
to any quagmires and pitfalls along any ole shore road till I has to,”
she declared.

“Let’s stop for the Captain and the rest,” Polly said, as they came to
the quiet cottage at Fair Havens, but it was locked, so they went on.
The Captain usually took the big carry-all and drove over to the village
church. There he could sit, and look out of the window beside his pew,
straight into the little graveyard, where rows and rows of Carey
headstones bade him be of good cheer, for the harbor was sure, and the
Pilot faithful to His promise.

But the girls loved the open air service up in the pines. The stadium
had been erected for lectures and Chautauqua meetings during the summer
months, and was beautifully situated on Lookout Hill. On one side it
commanded a fine view over the Sickle, clear out to where the old
Atlantic rolled in in long, dark green combers. Behind it were climbing
aisles of eternal green, depths of sweet-scented thicket, patches of
wild flowers, and above all the towering pines, with their incessant
murmur as though they were answering their big brother, the sea.

The stadium was a great wooden amphitheater, built roughly but strongly,
and roofed to protect its audiences against sudden summer showers. The
second Sunday the girls had gone, there had been a thunder storm, and it
had seemed so strange to watch the trees lashed and torn by the tempest,
while they sat under cover safe as could be.

“I never was so near a storm, and yet out of it,” Sue had declared.
“Why, you could have reached out, and patted the wind on the back, and
it couldn’t have hurt you.”

After service they walked slowly down the winding, rustic walk that led
to the shore.

“It seems to me, girls, that the service sounds ever so much more solemn
here than it does in a church,” Isabel was saying. “It seems so much
nearer heaven here in the woods.”

“But it’s not, really,” Kate put in, briskly. “That’s only an idea that
people have, and I think it’s wrong. Supposing God dwelt only in the
high places, what would become of those who sit in darkness, and the
shadow of death?”

Polly was looking out to sea, her brown eyes thoughtful, and a bit sad.
She didn’t know why she felt sad, but she did, and only the Captain
seemed to understand why. He had said once over at the island that a
barometer probably had no idea what ailed it, but it ailed just the
same, and Polly’s temperament was just as volatile.

“The other day,” she said, musingly, “the Captain said he had been
tramping the beach one awful night in a thunderstorm, when he was first
on coast duty, and he felt troubled about all the boats that were in
peril. Then all at once he thought of those words, ‘He maketh His angels
spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire.’ And he felt strengthened
all at once, so he wasn’t afraid any more.”

“How do you do, girls?” called Mrs. Vaughan’s pleasant voice behind
them, and they turned to find her and the Doctor with Dorothy and Bess.
The Doctor was to take dinner at the hotel with the Commodore’s family,
but they all walked back through the pine grove together to the shore
road.

“Wasn’t the sermon nice?” asked Bess, happily. “I love that parable
about the merchant who sought pearls.”

The Doctor nodded his head.

“That simile is one of the finest in the Bible,” he responded. “I had
the good fortune to attend the pearl harvest at Ceylon twice, and it
sets one thinking, it certainly sets one thinking.”

“Oh, tell us about it, please, Doctor?” pleaded Polly, slipping her hand
on his arm. “I’ve been wondering about it ever since we left the
stadium. Are there any pearls around here?”

The Doctor was not a Yankee, but he usually answered one question by
asking another, in Yankee fashion.

“What are you all going to do this afternoon?”

“Rest, and write letters home, and talk. Crullers and Aunty Welcome will
take long naps. Sue and Ted will get out their book of class songs, and
sing and play all of them over five times running. Isabel will read a
book, and Ruth and I will write letters.”

“That’s all right; just as long as you had not planned to go sailing.
About four, Dorothy and Bess and I will come over in the _Natica_ and
talk to you about pearls. I have some unset ones I will show you.”

“Is it true that they lose their luster, and people put them back into
the sea to regain it?” Kate inquired.

“Well, people do it, but I don’t know whether it helps them any. A pearl
merchant will tell you it is better to peel a pearl, but that is not so
romantic, is it? There was one Empress, you know, who sent her casket of
pearls every year to be immersed in the sea. Now, don’t ask any more
questions until this afternoon, then we’ll hold a talk _fest_.”

“No, a pearl _fest_,” Polly suggested. “And we’ll have a driftwood fire
on the beach after dark, and toast marshmallows, and eat hermits.”

“Will you tell me what hermits are?”

“I had rather leave that to Aunty Welcome, for she makes them, you
know,” laughed Polly.

They caught up with the carry-all on their way back, and walked beside
it on the path next the road. The Captain looked different without his
uniform, all dressed in a suit of sober black, but he was as rosy and as
twinkly-eyed as ever, and he looked over the girls with a feeling of
pride.

“You’re getting to be a credit to the sou’west shore,” he told them.
“Trig and taut as a fleet of clipper-built coasters, be’ant they,
mother? But you keep away from the Point, now mind. There’s a reef out
there that at low tide would rip up a keel like a submarine mine hitting
a Russian man-o’-war. And any sort of a west gale would blow you
straight out on it.”

“But there aren’t any gales,” said Sue.

“Not yet, but wait a bit. We’ll be into August shortly, and then, I tell
you, look out. There’s some quick fellows come a’racing out of the
sou’west that would take your heads off.”

“I wish we could get out into the open sea, though, before we go home,
Captain Carey,” said Polly, wistfully. “We’re only shore sailors.
Couldn’t we go out around the Point some fair day, and reach the open?”

The Captain put his head a bit on one side, and trailed the tasseled end
of the whip between the colt’s ears. Then he shook his head.

“You’d better not. That’s the safest way. If you want a good sail
outside the harbor, I’ll take you for one on a top master, forty foot
long, yes, I will. Billy Clewen, the station keeper, has one, and we’ll
sail clear out to Tarker’s Light. How’s that?”

“Beautiful,” the girls cried, and Polly added, “Don’t you forget, now.”

“Father never forgets anything,” Mrs. Carey spoke up, contentedly,
“excepting his place in the hymn-book, and in the Bible reading for each
Sunday.”

Then they all had a good laugh at the Captain, who was famous for losing
his place, and would be far ahead or far behind when the congregation
were just moving along easily.

“Avast there, where are you bound?” he would whisper to Nancy, and nudge
her to show him the right place.

“How’s an old fellow to know where they’re going to bring up next?” he
asked, indignantly. “They never hold true to their course, and they are
tacking before I know it, and off they go like a herring from a hook.”

“I thought they caught herring in nets,” said Crullers.

“They do,” agreed the Captain, heartily. “And that’s why you can’t make
one stay on a hook. They’re the most notional fish I ever saw. I’ve had
one get on a hook, and fairly wink me in the eye, and wiggle off again.”

“Benjy Carey!” exclaimed Mrs. Carey, “and you a-coming direct from
meeting to tell a yarn like that!”

But the Captain only laughed until he coughed, and Nancy had to pat him
on the back.

That afternoon the yacht club entertained in its own, particular
fashion. Nancy came over, but Tom went down to the station with his
father. Some day he meant to go on duty there too. It was one of the
Captain’s boasts that three generations of Careys had patrolled that
strip of rock-strewn coast, “and there’s another one in the making,” he
always added; so Tom would square his shoulders and try to look like one
of the crew.

The doctor dined at the hotel that day with Commodore Vaughan and his
family, and it was late afternoon before the girls caught sight of the
white motor boat cutting its way across the sparkling waters of the
sunlit bay. The broad veranda looked very cool and restful that
afternoon. Polly and Kate had spread all the available mats and had
carried out the round table from the sitting-room, dropping new
magazines over it invitingly, with a pitcher of fruit lemonade and a
plate of hermits to nibble on.

“Hermits, do you call these?” asked Bess, as she bit into her third one.
“I never heard of them, but they’re just dandy.”

“Well, there are hermits and hermits,” Polly explained. “But Aunty
Welcome’s are the best we’ve ever had, much better than Annie May’s at
the Hall. How do you make them, Aunty?”

Welcome paused in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her broad hips, her
brown eyes fairly shining with delight at their appreciation of her
cooking.

“I takes some flour, and den I takes some ’lasses, and it has to be good
’lasses. None ob dis syrupy trash dat just drizzles down. I want ’lasses
you can hyar go kerflop when it hits de dish; yas, I do.” She shook all
over with laughter. “Den I takes some cream, den I takes some spices,
and some brown sugar, and some eggs, and I mixes ’em up good. Den I jes’
puts in all de ’vailable fruit I got lying ’round, raisins, and
currants, and citron, and figs, and dates, and nuts, any ole thing. And
den I bakes ’em.”

“And we eat ’em,” concluded Sue, forcibly.

Even the doctor shook with laughter over the recipe.

“But I’m afraid if we tried to make some, Aunty, we’d make a failure of
it,” he said. “And they are certainly fine. Please may I have some
marmalade with mine?”

“Now tell about the pearl harvest,” prompted Ruth, when they were all
fairly settled, and the supply of hermits had diminished somewhat. “What
is it like?”

“How often have you been there?” added Kate.

“Twice. Last year and once when I was a youngster just out of college,
and bent on globe-trotting. Ceylon, you know, is the great pearl market
of the world, and yet the season of the catch lasts only six weeks. But
during those six weeks, instead of a long, jungle-fringed beach, there
rise the tents and houses of the pearl seekers, like a city of magic.
Every morning you can see the long boats go out, hundreds of them, and
each carrying from sixty to seventy men.”

“Divers?” asked Polly.

“Not all. Some are rowers, and some take care of the catch as the divers
bring it up. They are all natives, and trained to the work. When they
dive, all they carry down with them is their basket and a small tortoise
shell clip that holds their nostrils closed.”

“Don’t they have to wear diving suits?” asked Ted.

“No. They can stay under water longer than any human beings I have ever
seen. And after the catch of the day is brought in, it is put up at
auction, and then there is excitement enough to satisfy anyone. I have
often wondered why some artist has never put the scene of the pearl
harvest on canvas;” the doctor’s eyes were half closed, as if he could
recall it perfectly even then. “I have seen as many as five million
oysters piled there, waiting to be sold, and to the crowd it is one
great lottery. Any shell in the lot may contain a pearl worth thousands.
So they scramble, and push to get up close to the auctioneer, and even
the children will beg you for pennies so that they may buy a handful of
the shells and have the fun of opening them. Last year while I stood
there, a little old man in front of me, with a crutch, turned and begged
me to lift him up so the auctioneer would be sure to see him. He was a
Burmah merchant and told me afterwards he was sent every year to buy for
the native princes. Behind me was a tall, quiet Persian. They told me he
had found a pearl once years before that brought him over seventy
thousand dollars. It was a pink one, and flawless. And he had come every
year since and bid on every day’s catch in the hope of finding its
mate.”

“Oh, I’d love to be there,” cried Polly her eyes sparkling with
excitement. “And do they open them right in front of you so you can see
them find the pearls?”

“Some do. And when a pearl of great price is found, even to-day the
bidding jumps like magic over that catch the same as in the old days of
the parable. The merchants will still go and sell all they have to buy
the one pearl if they can get it.”

“I wonder why it is everybody loves pearls so,” said Ruth thoughtfully.
“I do myself, better than diamonds, or any of the  stones. They
seem different, almost as if they had life. Were they ever alive inside
the shells, Doctor Smith?”

“Let me see,” mused the doctor. “Are pearls alive? I’ve wondered that
myself. The scientists tell us, though, that a pearl is a disease of the
oyster, and others say it is only a grain of sand that has slipped
inside the shell and irritates the mollusc, so it wraps it about with a
secretion of its own that hardens and, after a while, you have the
pearl. The Chinese open oyster shells and slip inside tiny images of
Buddha, and the oyster covers them with mother-of-pearl.”

“Oh, Polly, don’t you know how we studied last year about the Malays,
and their pearl legend?” exclaimed Ted, eagerly. “They say at the full
of the moon the pearl oyster rises to the surface of the water and opens
its shell, and a dew drop falls into it, and is crystallized. And they
say the pearl is  by the weather at the time it was born. If the
night is clear, the pearl is perfect, and if it is cloudy, the pearl
will be opalescent and dim, and if there’s a flash of lightning, the
shell shuts up instantly and the pearl will be dwarfed.”

“It makes me think of the Polynesian way of catching pearls,” said the
doctor. “They send out a long boat at sunrise, a canoe, with some old
tribesman playing a weird, plaintive melody on a sort of flute, to scare
away evil spirits. Young girls are chosen to dive for the shells,
generally the fairest and purest in the village and they poise
themselves in the prow of the canoe and dive just as the sun rises.”

“I shall try it to-morrow morning,” said Polly promptly, her eyes
dancing with mischief. “Ted and Sue shall play on their mandolins for
me, and I will dive for pearls.”

“And you dare to call me vain,” teased Isabel. “I guess if anyone is to
dive, I will.”

“Let’s all dive,” suggested Kate, the peacemaker, laughing. “Tell us
some more, please, doctor, and don’t mind these giddy creatures.”

Ruth leaned forward, reflectively, her eyes dreamy and full of thought.

“Polly,” she said, “didn’t Mary Stuart love pearls? Didn’t she always
carry a rosary of pearls with her, and didn’t we read some place that it
was found clasped in her hands after she was killed?”

“Here, child, stop talking about such gloomy things,” Ted interposed,
briskly, lifting the tall pitcher of fruit lemonade. “May I pour you
another glass, doctor? It’s delicious. Polly dissolved some pearl dust
in it, and dreamed she was Cleopatra.”

“I never heard sech talk in all my born days, doctah, I never did,”
exclaimed Aunty Welcome, putting her head out rebukingly. “Ain’t dey a
lot ob crazy creeturs, sah?”

“Full of the joy of life, Welcome, full of the springtime,” replied the
doctor, happily. “Let them alone. I can stand it. Give me some more
pearl dust elixir, Miss Edwina.”

“Pearls stand for tears, really and truly,” said Dorothy, seriously.
“I’ve always heard that. The night before the king was killed,
Marguerite of Valois dreamed all her diamonds had turned to pearls, our
history teacher told us.”

“Stop it,” Ted insisted. “Can’t you see how melancholius-like Polly and
Ruth are looking? I shall be afraid, pretty soon, to touch a pearl with
a ten-foot pole, even if I find one in my oyster stew.”

“Don’t mind them, doctor,” said Polly, cheerfully. “The pearl is my
birthstone, and I love it dearly, and you won’t find me weeping often.
See, it’s past sundown now. We’re going to set fire to that pile of
driftwood down on the beach, and toast marshmallows around it, while the
glee club holds forth.”

“Just one minute,” called the doctor, as they rose. “I want you to look
at this.”

The girls gathered around his chair, as he drew a tiny packet from his
pocket, wrapped in tissue paper, and unfolding it disclosed several
unset pearls, large as peas, and rarely beautiful.

“Do you carry them with you like that?” asked Kate.

“Just like that,” replied the doctor, blithely, and he let them roll
about in the palm of his hand. “I bought them at the pearl harvest, and
I like to have them close to me. They say that Napoleon, when he sat and
dreamed of the conquest of the world, loved to feel unset pearls slip
through his fingers. So, why not I?”

“Oh, they are lovely!” Polly touched them lingeringly. “Isn’t it too bad
that such things should be shut up in a shell at the bottom of the
ocean?”

Ruth was calling to them to hurry, for the marshmallows were waiting to
be cooked, and the fire was started, and as they walked down to the
beach the doctor quoted:

    “‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark, unfathomed
       caves of ocean bear,
    Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its
       sweetness on the desert air.’”

“I think those pearls in your pocket are just as hidden and wasted,
doctor,” said Sue, deliberately, “as if they were in a dark, unfathomed
cave.”

“Do you? Well, it was kind of you not to say as if they were cast before
swine,” laughed the doctor.

“One of Sue’s charms is her engaging frankness,” put in Kate.

“I forgive her, for it’s in a good cause. And some day, if I find anyone
who will love and cherish them more than I do, I may give up one.”

[Illustration: “First Batch of Marshmallows Ready!” Called Ruth]

“First batch of marshmallows ready,” called Ruth, and the pearl _fest_
was over.




                              CHAPTER XVI

                          THE CAPTAIN’S PARTY


“Do you girls realize that it is the first week in August?”

It was about a week after the doctor’s talk, and they had just come up
to the porch after a dip in the bay.

“Let’s stay down in the sand, and dry off,” Ted suggested. “It’s early
yet.”

So down they trailed again, and sat on the sand. One special charm of
belonging to this yacht club was that you could do just what you wanted
when you wanted. As Polly said, it took all the fun out of anything when
you had to wait for it.

“Poor old King Solomon,” she would say, “I don’t know what it was he
longed for, but I am sure he never got it, because he said so
mournfully, ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ And I know just how
he felt when he said it.”

“I ought to mend my jacket,” said Sue, easily. “But there’s plenty of
time.”

“That’s what Sue always says,” Kate declared. “I think her motto and
Ted’s should be ‘There’s plenty of time.’”

“Well, there isn’t,” Polly remarked, as she sat down on a sand dune, and
rested her chin on her hands, with her hair falling around her like a
meditative mermaid. “The regatta is the fifteenth, and we’ve got to have
our boats all spick and span for the race.”

“You’re not really going to race for the Junior cup, are you, Polly?”
Isabel’s tone was very discouraging.

“I am.” Polly smiled at the big white club house across the bay quite as
if she expected it to nod back at her. “The _Tidy Jane_ is just as fine
a catboat as there is on the bay, and so are all our boats. Nancy’s
going to race the _Pirate_, Tom’s knockabout, and the other afternoon
when we sailed to the inlet and back, I had the best of her all the way.
Of course I shall race.”

“Is there a prize?” asked Crullers, the practical. The girls all broke
into a peal of laughter, and Ruth declared that Crullers never could see
anything in empty glory. There had to be a tangible goal for her to
exert herself.

“There’s a silver cup for the big boats to race for,” Polly replied.
“Commodore Vaughan’s sloop, _Adventure_, has held it for sixty-footers
for three years, they say. And there’s a smaller cup for twenty-footers
and under. We’d come under that head.”

“What will you use it for, Polly, after you win it?” asked Sue,
innocently, and Polly promptly threw sand at her, till she cried
quarter.

“Whether I win it or not, it’s the sport of the thing that counts,” she
said. “I never saw a race in all my life that I didn’t wish I was in it,
just for the chance of winning. It isn’t the prize so much, it’s the
honor of the thing, and the sport.”

“I know, Polly, that’s perfectly right,” rejoined Kate, approvingly.
“What if no one ever entered a race for fear they might not win; there’d
be no racing at all.”

“Well, if you intend entering, I shall too,” said Sue. “For I know that
the _Patsy D._ can outsail anything on this bay if she once ‘gets
a’going,’ as the Captain says. The trouble is, she won’t ‘get a’going’
until she has a mind to. I can’t seem to make her grab hold of a breeze
and pull.”

“You don’t let go your main sheet right,” Polly told her. “You hoist
your sail, and let it wobble before you let the boom swing about, and
catch the wind into the sail right. Makes me think of a story the
Captain told about one of the summer cottagers last year, who went out
with Tom and him one day. There was a big sea on, and when a puff of
wind caught her, the Captain called out, ‘Let go that jib, let go that
jib’. And the guest was really angry and indignant. ‘Who’s touching your
old jib, I should like to know,’ he said, huffily. The Captain just
shook when he told it.”

Ruth sat up suddenly, and put back her hair from her face.

“I just saw a boat put off from the Orienta dock,” she said. “It looks
like the _Nixie_. Bess is at the tiller. I wonder what they can want.
They’re making for here.”

It took hardly ten minutes to cross the bay at its narrow end, with a
good wind to help, and before the girls had time to run up to the
cottage and dress, the _Nixie_ was at the landing, with reefed sails.

“Mamma sent us over,” Dorothy exclaimed, as soon as she stepped ashore.
“The _Portland_ brought a consignment of fruit for the club last night,
and papa sends you over a basket of it with his compliments.”

The girls bore the heavy basket up to the porch and promptly explored
its contents. There was a large watermelon, some canteloupes, peaches
and pears, and a box of stuffed dates.

“Mamma put those in because she says she knows what girls like,” said
Bess, perching herself on the porch railing contentedly. “And what do
you think? We’ve teased and begged to be allowed to come over here with
you for regatta week, and now we may if you will let us. You can get a
better view of the bay from this porch than you can from the club.”

“Well, young lady, you’ll get your view of the race from the stern
locker of the _Nixie_,” said Dorothy, firmly. “Polly won’t allow us in
the club unless we agree to race for the glory of it, will you?”

“No, ma’am,” returned Polly, serenely, as she knelt down, and spread out
several newspapers.

“What are you going to do, Polly?” asked Isabel, who believed firmly in
the fitness of things. “Oh, don’t cut into the melon out here, dear. Put
it on the ice, and let it cool.”

“Put it on the ice!” Polly repeated, with fine scorn. “Listen to her,
girls. You’d think we had a whole refrigerator handy. Dorothy, all the
ice we own is wrapped up in Ruth’s old waterproof cape, in a tub down in
the cellar. It’s about the size of a pincushion, and if I were to set
this watermelon on it, it would just evaporate. We will eat the melon
now to save it.”

“It’s plenty cold,” Dorothy helped lift the melon down on the papers.
“But, Polly, will it be all right if we come over and stay for regatta
week?”

“It will, and we’ll be ever and ever so glad to have you. It’s very
stylish, Isabel, to entertain guests during a regatta week. Will you
please bring along your own blankets, as we haven’t enough to go
’round.”

“Indeed, we will,” Dorothy cried, happily, “and I’m so pleased. Mamma
always is busy regatta week, and so is papa, and Bess and I just have to
look after ourselves. She’s going on the Adventure too for the race. Oh,
Polly, it’s splendid to watch them. Last year, at the finish, the
_Adventure_ and _Mermaid_ were right together, and we all stood up on
chairs, and waved flags at them, and shouted as they came down the last
stretch with every inch of canvas crowded on.”

Polly was very busy carving the watermelon in fancy fashion, so that
when it fell apart, it looked like a huge, red-hearted lily.

“Makes it taste better,” she said, judiciously. “Who won last year,
Dorothy?”

“Oh, the _Adventure_, of course. Right at the very last they crowded on
another reef—what do you call that little bit of a sail way up top on a
sloop, Polly?”

Polly shook her head.

“T’gallant something, isn’t it? That’s what the Captain calls my
eyebrows. Tarry top lights, and t’gallant eyebrows, so it must mean
something way high up.”

“Probably,” Dorothy agreed. “Anyway, they let out another reef, and the
_Adventure_ just slipped by the _Mermaid_ like a bit of down. Papa’s
boat’s a sloop. It seems to me it’s all sails. It looks like a great
gull with outspread wings when it’s going full tilt out to sea.”

“You must always speak of a ship as she or her,” corrected Bess. “Papa
called you a sandpiper for that, Dolly.”

“I don’t care,” Dorothy laughed. “I want to tell the girls about it.
There are six staterooms on it, and when the season closes up here at
Eagle Bay, we sail south to Boston, and then home. Bess and I go to
boarding-school.”

Just then Tom appeared around the west shore, holding down the _Pirate_,
while he called,

“Want anything over to Eastport?”

“Yes. Mail, potatoes and soap,” called back Polly, with a smile and wave
of her hand; then to Dorothy, as if no interruption had occurred, “We’re
going out with the Captain for a sail around the Point Light, and down
to Tarker’s Light. He said he’d take us if we behaved for a week, and we
have. Haven’t been out once in a bad wind, haven’t made any trouble at
all, so now we’re going. Why can’t you and Bess stay and have dinner
with us, though? We won’t start before two, and Aunty’s making clam pie,
Maryland style, and baked, stuffed tomatoes, and peach dumplings.”

“Oh, we’ll stay fast enough,” cried Bess, while Dorothy just smiled.
“You do have the best things to eat over here that I know anything
about. Papa says he’s coming over some day just to sample them, and find
out if it’s really true. Doctor Smith says it is; so papa can’t really
tell us out and out that we are coloring it up a little.”

“Tell him we’d be delighted to entertain him any time, and Mrs. Vaughan,
too,” exclaimed Polly, with true Southern hospitality. “We’ll have fried
sweet potatoes, and fried chicken, and corn fritters, and corn pone, all
from Aunty Welcome’s special recipes. She’ll be so proud to get up a
dinner and we’d love to have you.”

“Where’s Isabel?” asked Sue suddenly. “Did she go up to dress?”

“No, I’m up here in the hammock. I don’t want to get all freckled in
that sunlight,” came Isabel’s tones from the shadiest corner of the
porch.

“Pull her forth, girls,” ordered Polly, gaily. “She’s too exclusive. She
just wants to set herself up before us as a mirror of style, and we
won’t have it. Pull her forth, and walk her in the sun till she’s as
freckled as a cowslip. What do you think, Dorothy, this young person
wants to wear a bathing cap with a bow on the front and a ruffle around
it like an old maid’s nightcap, and she takes a bar of violet scented
soap with her into the deep blue sea when she trips down to bathe. It
once dropped like a stone down to the bottom, and she never got it.”

“‘Though lost to sight, to memory dear,’” quoted Sue; she linked arms
with Ted and sang the refrain over and over with variations, until
Isabel put her fingers in her ears and ran for the house. Suddenly the
majestic form of Aunty Welcome appeared on the porch, and waved a dish
towel at them.

“Ain’t dey nobody at all going to eat clam pie?” she called. “If you all
don’t look like a mess ob turtles burrowing in de sand, den I miss my
guess. And every one eating watermelon. Well, for de love ob cats! Miss
Polly, don’t you know you’s going ter be so freckled dat you can’t find
de jining places? You come on up out ob dat sand now, you hyar me?”

“Yes’m,” said Polly, meekly, and the rest trailed after her, for Aunty
Welcome’s word was law on Lost Island.

After dinner the Vaughan girls had to return, but the others dressed and
sat out on the steps, awaiting the Captain’s coming. The everyday suits
of blue duck had been discarded, and they had dressed in festal array to
honor the Captain. They were all in their best yachting suits of white
duck, trimmed in dark blue, with dark blue reefer jackets, and caps to
match. But before the trip was over, when the seas had swashed up
merrily over the sloop, as she keeled over to the lee-shore, they wished
they had worn the blue duck.

“What boat will he bring that can carry all of us?” asked Sue.

“Tom said the sloop,” answered Polly, as she sat up on the railing, and
re-tied Crullers’ hair bows into a semblance of neatness and taste. “It
belongs to the lighthouse keeper at the Point, but the Captain can
borrow it whenever he wants, and it’s a sea-going craft.”

“Is it, indeed?” giggled Sue. “Girls, do you notice how Commodore Polly
tosses around nautical phrases real careless-like nowadays?”

There hove into sight around the Knob, just then, the Captain and his
sloop. Nancy and Tom were aboard too, and acting as able seamen.

“Polly, I’ll get your soap and potatoes and mail to-night,” shouted Tom,
as they came within hail. “I saw Billy Clewen over at the Inlet with his
tender, and I hopped in so as to meet father at the Point, and come on
down.”

“That’s all right,” Polly responded. “Oh, girls, isn’t she handsome,” as
they watched the sloop under the Captain’s handling. Steadily, easily,
without any apparent fuss or bother, he brought her about, reefed her
sails, and left her standing, as Tom said, quiet as a lamb, without a
halter on.

“Who puts a halter on a lamb anyway, Tom?” teased Nancy. “Besides, the
_Lucy C._ has a halter on. Didn’t you see me just drop it overboard? We
can’t bring her up to the landing, Polly. She draws nine feet—”

“Seven,” corrected the Captain, as he smoked comfortably on his pet
pipe, an old briarwood whose bowl was all charred from long usage. “And
ten-foot beam.”

“How can we get aboard, then?” asked Polly.

“I’m coming after you in the ‘dink,’” Tom answered.

“Well, my land! If I ever see sech a top-heavy, lopsided thing,”
murmured Aunty Welcome. “Is you all going to trust your precious lives
out in mid ocean in sech a contrivance?”

“Don’t you fret one bit, not when we’re with Captain Carey,” Polly
laughed as she waved her hand. The last girl stepped aboard, and the
sails were hoisted. After the little spreads of canvas on their own
boats, it seemed to the girls as if the sails of the _Lucy C._ were
gigantic, but Tom and his father managed them trimly, and as the wind
filled them, they struck out across the bay with a tilt to leeward that
was delightful.

“Captain, do I walk with the right sort of roll?” asked Ted, her hands
deep in her reefer pockets, her cap on the back of her red curls, as she
stepped boldly out on the slanting deck. But the sloop dipped to a wave,
and came up with a lurch, and Ted sat down with startling suddenness.

“Well, not quite,” the Captain answered from the wheel, his blue eyes
twinkling. “You’d better get acquainted with her first. Now, you can’t
get up and do a grand march along the deck of a driving sloop. It’s
against all human nature and boat nature. You’ve got to sit tight, and
mind the sloop, and follow her moods, and get ahead of them too. A sloop
has got more moods than any boat I know of. A yawl is sort of divided in
her ways, like a widow after her second husband. She’s got one before,
and one behind, so to speak, and it steadies her a bit, but a sloop’s
sails act in close sympathy, and when one of them starts acting
kittenish, the rest follow suit.”

“How large is this one, Captain?” asked Ruth, holding to her cap, as the
wind blew freshly around her.

“About forty foot, more or less. Her draught’s seven foot.”

“Why here we are to the channel already,” Polly sang out, as they
slipped past Smugglers’ Cove, and could see the view out to sea around
the Point. The doctor was sitting down on the landing fishing; fishing
tranquilly, in his own way. There were lines hanging all around him,
fastened to the planks with an invention of his own, by which a little
bell rang every time a fish took the bait. Placidly he sat there, his
hat tilted forward to shield his eyes, and a pile of magazines beside
him betraying his real occupation. The girls called and called to him;
at last he looked up and waved to them.

As they rounded the Point the wind freshened considerably. It was
glorious to sail with the sharp bow cutting the water like a knife, and
throwing up great clouds of spray that drenched the girls like an April
shower as the head wind threw it back on them. Overhead the canvas
tugged until the rigging sang a tune all its own.

Ted and Sue were singing at the tops of their voices, arms linked
closely, backed up against what Crullers called “the high side of her.”
The others joined in the choruses, except Polly, who stood beside the
Captain at the wheel. There was a look in her dark eyes that matched his
own, as she half closed them in the face of the wind, a look out at the
open sea they both loved well. Once the Captain turned his head, and
smiled down at her, as if to let her know he understood her feelings
exactly, and he let her help with the jib several times, while he and
Tom managed the main sail, and Nancy held her steady on her course at
the little pilot wheel.

“It’s ever so much rougher out here than it is in the bay, isn’t it?”
Isabel called faintly, but the wind drowned her voice, and she sat
huddled up on a locker with her coat turned up around her ears, for all
the world like a ship’s cat in a storm, Tom said.

Tarker’s Light was about five miles down the west shore towards
Portland. The seas were longer and heavier than those on the bay, but
the sloop rode them easily, and only shipped one big green fellow, as
the Captain tacked south of the Light, and cut across back towards home.
It splashed up over the deck house, and caught Isabel and the rest
fairly, until they shrieked. Polly and Nancy escaped, for they were with
the Captain, and they rounded the big bell buoy out in mid channel that
clanked a warning note as if it had a cold in its head, Sue said.

It was after five when they came up to the Life Saving Station on the
Point, and stood by handsomely while Billy Clewen, the keeper, came out
in a dory and took off the girls.

“I’m thinking that I’ll send you home by the shore road, with Tom and a
lantern,” said the Captain, as they walked up the beach towards the low
wooden buildings that nestled among the great hummocks of sand at the
Point. “I’m on the eight to twelve watch to-night, and I can walk a ways
with you myself, but the wind’s dropped down with the sun, and there’ll
hardly be a puff to carry you back by water.”

“How lonesome it looks out here,” said Polly, standing on one of the
sand dunes, and gazing around her. The Point of the Sickle came down to
what Tom called a mere “spit of sand.” There were few rocks out there,
except for the reef that lay east of the channel, towards the east
shore. On the Point there was just a long, low stretch of sand, with
great circling combers flowing in ceaselessly, breaking one above
another on the long, shallow shingle. Dark green they were underneath,
then lighter, and lighter, as the sunlight shot them through with
rainbow hues, and last of all the curling plumes of spray tossed on
their crests.

“Isn’t it all pretty,” cried Ruth, her cheeks turning pink as she ran to
Polly’s side. “Don’t you know some place in Kipling where he tells about
the white horses of the sea? Oh, Polly, I love it all so. I never saw
the real ocean before. I mean to stand on a shore, and look out and out
and out on just waves, and know that there’s no land for a thousand
miles.”

“Farther than that,” said Polly. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“So it is, so it is, now,” agreed the Captain, “but ’tain’t so pretty in
the winter, when the ice piles up, and the sleet beats you half down to
the ground, when you try to fight your way in its face.”

“Do you have to patrol all night long on the beach?” Polly asked, in her
earnest, compassionate way.

“Well, no. We take it in watches. One watch leaves about sunset, and
they travel two miles to the half-way house over yonder, and they meet
the next watch, and so it goes through the night.”

“What’s the name of that queer light they carry around their necks?”
asked Crullers. “It explodes, I think.”

“That’s the Coston light,” said the Captain. “I’ll show you some when we
get inside the station. We don’t use them unless there’s a ship in
danger at night. It’s to let the crew know they have been seen and help
will be sent. There’s a spring you tap, and a percussion cap explodes
that sets fire to the red light. Last spring, along the first of April,
we got the tail end of a gale that had traveled all along the coast, and
still had spunk enough to run a schooner on the reef yonder. We saw her
beating her way down about sunset. Lumber boat she was, bound for
Boston. I says then to Billy Clewen over at the Light that she’d never
get by the Point. So we was looking out for her, but the crew were all
Gloucester boys, and they wouldn’t give up till she’d struck fair and
square.”

“Then what?” Polly’s dark, straight brows drew together anxiously. She
looked out at the reef that showed its teeth about the incoming tide.

“We lost two of them,” said the Captain. “They was brothers, poor
laddies. They came ashore two and a half miles below here. But we took
off the rest.”

“Oh, I think it’s terrible, all the wrecks there are,” exclaimed Ruth,
tensely. “Death seems so useless when it’s an accident.”

“Well, I’m thinking there ain’t anything that happens under the sun you
can call useless,” rejoined the old sailor, placidly.

Polly began to sing, her voice rising clear and high on the breeze that
blew up from the west, as the sun went down.

        “Three fishers went sailing out into the west,
          Out into the west as the sun went down,
        Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
          And the children stood watching them out of the town.
        For men must work and women must weep,
          And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,
        Though the harbor bar be moaning.”

“Oh, Polly, don’t, please,” cried Ruth and Isabel together. “It makes
the cold chills run down your back.”

“Well, now, I never feel that way about it,” said the Captain,
contentedly. “Our times are in His hands, do you mind? Our times are in
His hands. Don’t you ever forget that. When I was a youngster like you
girls and Tom here, I used to reason along those lines too, and I’d be
hoping I’d die this way and that way, and I’d be wishing for a chariot
and some angels. Well, now it rests me to feel that I’m going to tread
the same gangway as the rest, and my Captain is counting on me to stand
faithful to my articles. I’ve a pretty good notion this dying business
isn’t so troublesome as folks think. I’ve picked up a good many poor
lads along the shore, and not one of them looked worried. Some were sort
of smiling. It’s real comforting, if you look at it sensibly.”

The girls remembered that sunset hour all their lives. There was nothing
exciting about the quiet station, nor the lighthouse out on the Point,
although they did find the keeper, Billy Clewen, very kind. He was a
little old man about seventy-four, but everybody along the shore called
him Billy Clewen. One thing that he told them the girls thought very
pathetic. He said in bad weather the sea birds would see the light and
would fly to it, and beat their lives out against the heavy glass,
seeking shelter from a storm.

“Were you ever in danger out here, Mr. Clewen?” asked Isabel, whose mind
always drifted towards romance.

“Just call me Billy, miss,” answered the old fellow, happily, as he
followed them out into the neat garden, with its paling fence half
buried in sand. “I can’t just say as I was, and I can’t just say as I
wasn’t, nuther. It’s about ten years ago, and my wife was alive. Her
father used to be lighthouse tender before I come here, and she was born
in this house. And that winter I come down sick with pneumony. Pretty
bad sick I was, too, pretty bad sick. Sally, she had to turn in and trim
the lamps and see they was lighted up on time, and look after me
besides, and she was sorter tangled up herself with sciatic rheumatiz,
and if the ile didn’t give out on top of it all.”

“The what, Billy?” asked Crullers, innocently.

“Ile, ile, what we put into the lamps. Anyhow, I remembered it the last
thing, and told her the boys at the station would help her. There was a
nor’wester a-blowing round this Point that would have picked up an ocean
liner, and played ball with it, and the snow a-banking up around us like
sand dunes. I didn’t think Sally would weather it, but she started off.
The fever had me tight, but I held my course and when it grew dark and
no Sally, up I gets out of bed, and crept along on my hands and knees to
the passageway that leads to the tower, and that’s where the Captain
found me when he came to fill the lamps and light ’em up.”

“How did he know?” asked Polly, eagerly.

“He knew I was sick, and he was bringing me over some medicine Mis’
Carey fixed up for me, and he found Sarah in a drift, half-way between
the Station and this here fence, half froze, but he had the ile, Lord
bless your hearts, he had the ile, and he set the light burning.”

“Avast there, Billy,” shouted the Captain over his shoulder. “Are you
spinning that there oil yarn to those poor children?”

“I am, Cap, I am,” laughed Billy. “And I’ll spin it to Saint Peter too,
when I stop to rest a bit by the gates of pearl, if he’ll give me an
ear, just to let him know you’re coming.”




                              CHAPTER XVII

                             POLLY PREPARES


It was dark when the girls reached the cottage on the island that night.
They lingered at the Life Saving Station until the Captain ordered them
home, and then Tom led the way with a lantern along the shore road.
There was no moon, but the stars shone, and the wind had gone down,
leaving the sea quiet, except for the long, lazy swells that brushed
along the ocean beach to their left.

Once Tom paused at a rise in the ground and pointed away off to the
south side of the Sickle where a light twinkled.

“That’s the half-way house,” he told them. “They have one every two
miles along shore; the men meet there and exchange slips and pass on.
I’ll be glad when I’m old enough to join.”

“Say, Polly,” exclaimed Ruth that night, as the girls sat around in the
living-room, after they were undressed, combing their hair, and chatting
girl fashion, “isn’t it queer that people who lead lives of danger never
seem to think anything of it at all?”

[Illustration: Combing Their Hair and Chatting, Girl Fashion]

“You’re never afraid of anything you know all about,” Kate put in. “It’s
the unknown danger that scares you.”

“I mean firemen, and soldiers, and life-savers—”

“And mothers and fathers, and heroes generally,” put in Polly, as she
sat on a sofa cushion, her long, brown curls falling loosely around her,
and her pink kimono slipped on over her night gown, for the nights were
always cool on the bay. “I know what you mean, Ruth. It’s because they
have so much else to think about that they haven’t time to worry. Tom’s
all ready to make a business of being a hero, and he doesn’t realize it
is being a hero. He thinks it’s lots of fun.”

“Girls,” called out Sue from the table, where she was tracing strange
figures on a sheet of paper, “does the course cut around this side of
Smugglers’ Cove, or the Inlet side?”

“Inlet,” Polly replied. “It’s a straight line due northeast, then east
by southeast for the channel.”

“Then we can see it better from our own porch than from the Orienta.”

“I know we can, but we’re going over to the Orienta, because grandfather
will be there, we hope, and we want to be all mixed in with the really,
truly yachtsmen.”

“It won’t matter the first day, Polly, because that’s for the largest
boats. They are to sail on a fifteen-mile course, Dorothy says, out to
sea, then zigzag back to Tarker’s Light, and along shore home. The
second day is for thirty-footers and forty-footers, and they take the
north shore run for eight miles and back. The third day is ours, the
twenty-footers and under, and we are to sail right here in Eagle Bay,
from the club to the Point, and across the bay to the mouth of the
Inlet, then back on the two-mile stretch to Fair Havens.”

“It’s more than two miles from the Inlet to Fair Havens,” protested
Crullers.

“No, it isn’t,” said Polly. “Nancy and I have sailed it often. It’s a
longer stretch from the club house to the Point by a mile, than it is
from Fair Havens to the Inlet, because the Sickle runs away out into the
sea, don’t you know.”

“How many of us are going to enter for the Junior Cup?” Kate asked.

Polly looked around her at the assembled group. Isabel and Crullers
preserved a dignified silence. Ruth hesitated, pondering many things.
Only Sue and Ted and Kate said positively that they would enter the race
for twenty-footers and under; Sue with the _Patsy D._, Ted with the
_Hurricane_, and Kate with her skip-jack, the _Witch Cat_.

“Nancy’s going to enter the _Pirate_,” Polly said. “And I will sail the
_Tidy Jane!_ How about you, Ruth?”

“Polly, I don’t honestly think I had better go into the race. I can’t
manage the _Iris_ well enough to race her, and I’ll be sure to get into
somebody’s way if they don’t succeed in getting into mine first.”

“No, you won’t, Grandma. Stop your fussing,” laughed Polly. “You can
sail a boat as well as any of us, and it’s lots of fun. Dorothy says we
will be the only outsiders in that class, the rest are Juniors from the
Orienta.”

“Boys?” Ruth’s tone was ominous.

“I don’t know whether they will be boys or pollywogs,” said Polly, her
eyes full of mischief. “Who’s afraid, anyway? I’d just as soon race
against boys as girls.”

“No boys in the twenty-footer class,” called Kate.

“How do you know?”

“I asked Tom. The only boys’ yacht club around here is the Pautipaug
Beach Club, about five miles east, and they never race, he says. All
they do is fish, and camp out, and slosh around shore.”

“What’s that?” asked Polly.

“I don’t know. Tom called it that. He says they hoist a sail, and lash
the tiller, and then go to sleep.”

“Well, that’s only one of Tom’s yarns, but just the same I think that is
all most yacht clubs do, ‘slosh around shore.’” Polly’s tone was full of
fine, ringing scorn.

“But, Polly, there are five or six girls from the Orienta Juniors, and
we’ll have to race against them.”

“All the more fun,” responded the Commodore with true sportsmanlike
generosity. “I do hope that grandfather will come north so he can see
it.”

“And watch us win,” added Sue.

“Oh, you may laugh,” persisted Polly, happily, “but I can’t see why one
of us shouldn’t win. We can sail our boats every bit as well as Dorothy
and Bess, or any Orienta girl. Nancy is the only one who can beat us,
and I’d just as soon she did, if it had to be somebody. It would be for
the glory of our club anyway, if she did. Week after next, children,
nine days, to be accurate, as Fraulein used to say, is the event, and we
must clean up our old hulls, and get in line, and practise along the
course. It means work, every single day, with our sleeves rolled up.”

“Well, I am not going to race,” Isabel said, decidedly. “I want to
finish my shell portìere before we go home, and fix up my collection,
and it’s too hard work.”

“I’d like to race, but I’m afraid to,” Crullers put in, dubiously.
“Polly, I just can’t.”

“Well, don’t then,” said Polly, cheerfully. “You two can be our
rocking-chair fleet. There’s always one in every club. You may sit up
here and enjoy the view with Aunty Welcome.”

The following days were the busiest that Lost Island had seen that
summer. Tom and Nancy came over every morning, after their own work was
done, advising and assisting. Dorothy and Bess were enthusiastic over
the Junior event. There were more entries for it than ever before,
Commodore Vaughan said, and they were all girls. Every afternoon the
graceful little “cats” and knockabouts, yawls and skipjacks, sailed on
the bay, and it looked as if Nancy and Dorothy had the best showing, for
theirs were the largest boats.

The course was neither difficult nor dangerous in any way, and providing
the weather and wind held fair, the race was bound to be a spirited one,
for it would be a straight away run.

One day they all went over to the Orienta Club to look at the trophy the
winner of the Junior event would bear away. It was an exact reproduction
of the large Championship Cup the Orienta Club had held for several
years. The cup stood about eight inches high, lined with gold, and
shaped like a chalice, the outer side was of richly chased silver, and
engraved.

“I like that very much,” Polly remarked, critically, as she scrutinized
the workmanship on it. “Don’t you remember, Ruth, the summer we went
down to Old Point Comfort with grandfather and saw the regatta? I went
on the committee boat that day, and followed the race. But the cup
didn’t look like a cup at all. It looked more like a silver ice-water
pitcher.”

“Maybe it was a flagon,” Kate said meditatively. “Did it have a beak,
and a handle?”

“Two handles,” Polly returned, “and a large curved beak, and a cover to
it like a syrup jug. And yet they called it a cup.”

“This one has two handles, look, Polly,” said Ted. “I like it that way.”

“So do I,” said Sue. “I shall enjoy drinking the _Patsy D.’s_ health in
it with Aunty Welcome’s fruit lemonade after the race is won.”

“Listen to her, Polly. As if her old _Patsy_ had any chance at all
against my _Hurricane_.”

Sue smiled, and slipped her arm through Ted’s.

“Bide a wee, Edwina,” she laughed. “I’ll let you drink out of it first
of all.”

The day before the regatta was an exciting one on Eagle Bay. Sometime
the night before the _Adventure_ dropped anchor, and the first object
the girls beheld the following morning was the slender, low yacht, with
her great uplift of spars and white-clad sailors running about the deck.

“She’s won ever so many cups,” Dorothy said, as they watched her through
opera glasses, which Polly had thought to slip in with her equipment.
“They stand all in a long row on her cabin sideboard. And she’s worth
over fifty thousand dollars. When I told papa I thought that was too
much to pay for a yacht, he laughed at me and said some steam yachts
cost as much as that just to keep traveling for a year.”

“There comes another one around the Point,” called Ted. “That’s a yawl,
isn’t it?”

“Auxiliary yawl,” corrected Dorothy. “How queer her sails look from
here, the big mainsail, and topsail, and the jib, and then that funny
spread down near the end. Makes me think of a cat and her kitten. But
wait till the sloops arrive. I like them the best. They are so stately
and slender, and when they sail under full canvas they dip to the wind
like gulls.”

Polly had hesitated over putting fresh coats of paint on the _Tidy
Jane_, and the _Iris_. The other boats were in fairly good order, for
Tom and his father had repainted them early in the spring for the Holmes
boys. But that final week before the event, Polly painted and caulked
seams, and overhauled with an energy and vim that made even Tom
remonstrate.

“Now you mind what I tell you, it won’t make them go a bit faster, not a
bit,” he grumbled, when Polly coaxed him to help them fix a dry dock.

“Oh, but Tom, they’ll look so handsome,” pleaded Polly. “I’m going to
run a beautiful dark blue belt ribbon of paint around the _Tidy Jane_,
and then, under strained circumstances—”

“Now, see here,” Tom crawled laboriously out from under the _Jane_, a
paint pot in one hand and a brush in the other, “you can strain all the
circumstances you want, but she won’t go a bit faster.”

The girls broke into a peal of laughter at him, but Tom stolidly refused
to see anything funny in the whole proceeding and went on painting
reluctantly.

But it paid, even the Captain said so the last day, when he came over on
a tour of inspection, and approved of the Polly Page Club’s racers,
clean and trim as paint and polish could make them.

“Aren’t they handsome?” asked Polly, proudly, as she stood beside him on
the landing, and surveyed the fleet.

“Fine and dandy,” echoed the Captain, heartily. “If they act as saucy as
they look, there won’t be a running chance for any other boat on the
bay. You want to look out for the _Jane_, mind. Don’t give her her head.
She’s a smart one, now, I tell you. I never let her find out she could
get the best of me, but she was always a-trying. Make her feel your hand
steady on the tiller, every minute, or she’ll bolt like a wild thing.
And when she takes a notion to tilt on her beam end in a good puff of
wind, why, let her tilt. She can’t do a mite of harm, not a mite. I’ve
had her out when the seas would skip clean over her, and half fill the
cockpit, and she’d tilt till she’d lift her centerboard out of the
water. Yes, ma’am. And what did I do? Just patted her down easy, and let
her drift off a bit to leeward till the wind spilled out of her sail,
and when she came about again, she’d right herself like a lady and walk
on.”

Polly nodded comprehendingly.

“I know how she acts,” she said. “And that’s just the way I feel about
her, too, Captain Carey, as if she were alive, and could almost
understand what I say to her.”

“Well, it’s something plain humans can’t know about,” the Captain
answered, in his slow, restful, philosophic way. “Every boat on the face
of the waters has got just as much personality as you or I, and they’ve
got dispositions too. I’ve shipped before now on vessels that you
couldn’t make behave themselves any more’n you could harness up a
porpoise to a plough. Then I’ve shipped on bashful, nervous creeturs of
boats, that would dance and shiver their timbers from one beam end to
another, for all the world like some old woman. There was a three-master
out of Martha’s Vineyard when I was a lad. She carried various articles
of trade along the west coast of Africa, and she was the skeeriest thing
I ever sailed on. She had her favorites among the crew too, mind you.
I’ve seen her fairly tremble and waver when the pilot for the day would
take hold of her. He was a big, slow chap from a place called Noank down
on the Connecticut shore. Name was Shad Hardy, and it suited him. He had
the identical expression of a shad. I was on night duty then at the
wheel, and the minute she’d feel my hand on the spokes, she was like a
lamb. I’d speak to her, and steady her up a bit, and she’d march along
in the wind, like a grenadier to band music. I always did say it wa’n’t
no use trying to make a ship like you, when it had made up its mind it
wouldn’t. They’re the notioniest things alive, ’cepting females, and I
sometimes think that’s why some discerning seaman called a boat ‘she’
and set public opinion that way.”

“Oh, Captain, when you know how nice we are, and how we mind you,”
rebuked Polly. “Just wait till to-morrow.”

“The Junior race won’t come off till the third day Tom tells me,” the
Captain answered. “And that makes me think.” He dipped into his jacket
pocket, and pulled forth neat rolls of twine and lines, a pouch of
tobacco, and some keys. “They just gave me a telegram for you over at
the hotel. Here ’tis. No, ’tain’t. Avast there, maybe it’s down below.
Nancy and mother told me not to give it to you sudden, for fear it might
be bad news.”

“Oh, I don’t think it is,” Polly said, hopefully. She never went out and
opened the gate for trouble, not Polly.

The Captain drew forth the yellow envelope gingerly.

“I wouldn’t open it in too big a hurry, anyway,” he warned. “Better take
such matters pretty easy. I’m suspicious of the pesky things every time
I see one. I never got one yet that told me any good news. It always
plumps you full of bad surprises, all to once.”

“Well, this is good news,” Polly cried, as she glanced over the sheet of
paper. “It’s from grandfather, and he’ll be here to-morrow, and stay for
regatta week, then take us home with him! Let’s see, from the fifteenth
to the twenty-second is the regatta, then allowing four days down the
coast we’ll get to Queen’s Ferry just in time to rest up before school
opens.”

The Captain’s eyes twinkled under their bushy brows.

“I shall have to hand in a true and faithful report if the Admiral asks
me for one,” he said.

“Oh, but we’ve been good, haven’t we, Captain Carey?”

“Fair to middlin’, fair to middlin’,” laughed the old sailor, as he
started down the beach, and Polly ran up to the house to break the news
to the other girls.




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                              THE REGATTA


There was an air of excitement and activity about Eagle Bay the
following morning. All summer long it had been a quiet inlet of the
great Atlantic. When the long breakers would come surging in on the
south shore of the Sickle, half a mile over on its north shore there
would hardly be a ripple on the bay. Up at the east end of course, near
the Point, the heavy seas would come racing through the channel, but
before they had gone far, the bay had caught them and soothed them, and
all their fury died away in her placid arms.

But when the sun rose on the fifteenth of August, all along the bay
there was a holiday look to things. The weather was splendid, not too
warm nor too windy, but just right, the girls declared, as they all
trouped out on the porch before breakfast, with various “envelopes”
around them, as Crullers expressed it, to take a look at the scene. The
hotel flaunted flags wherever a flag could be placed to advantage, and
all along the beach, the cottages had out bunting and flags too. At the
landing at Fair Havens, one huge flag was unfurled with dignity to the
morning breeze.

“Oh, dear, I wish we had thought to buy a lot of flags too,” cried
Isabel.

“There’s a whole week of it,” Polly answered. “We can buy them to-day
over in the village. Don’t worry over anything at all, girls. Let’s be
just as happy as we can while it lasts.”

Twelve large yachts they counted, besides several steam launches, motor
boats, and smaller sailing craft. From the rigging of every one of them
fluttered gay strings of small flags, and Polly finally ran down to
their own flag pole and raised the blue and gold pennant of which the
girls were so proud.

“Before the week is over, girls,” cried Kate, waving her towel at it
joyously, as she came out on the porch after her bath, clad in her
bathrobe, “every boat on the bay will know and respect that flag.”

The Commodore had sent over a cordial invitation for them to be the
guests of the Orienta whenever they felt like it during regatta week.
Polly hardly knew what to say about it. The best view of the course
could be had from Lost Island, but the girls wanted to go to the big
club house and “strut,” as Sue said.

“You’re a lot of vain bluejays,” Polly declared laughingly. “All you
want to do is dress up in your best yachting suits, and go over there
and be petted. I know you all.”

“Oh, Polly, come on. We haven’t been petted much this summer, have we?”
pleaded Ted. “We’ve stayed right here and worked like able seamen, you
know we have. Mayn’t we tie on our best hair ribbons now and go and eat
ice cream, please?”

“Please, Commodore,” echoed Kate and Ruth, laughingly, and the Commodore
finally agreed.

“I think we’d better start by half-past eight, girls,” she said, as she
sat in the hammock and deliberately brushed out her brown curls.

“Say, Polly, suppose somebody over on the yachts had field glasses, and
could see you?” questioned Isabel.

“See _me_? Look at Kate clad in a bath robe of bright blue Turkish
toweling. Look at Crullers with a red shawl draped artistically over her
nightgown. I move we all adjourn out of sight.”

Aunty Welcome’s turbaned head appeared at the kitchen door, as they all
trooped back into the living-room.

“Has you all been out on dat porch in your nightgowns?” she asked,
ominously. “Well, I did think I might make a Spanish omelet for
breakfast, but now you don’t get it.”

“Oh, please, darling, precious Aunty—” began Polly, who loved Spanish
omelet, but Welcome held firmly to her point.

“No, ma’am. It’s de only power I got over you all, and if you don’t
behave, I won’t cook nice things for you. Oatmeal and boiled eggs is
what you’ll get.”

“Let’s hurry and dress, girls, and maybe she will.” Polly curled her
hair over her finger quickly, and tied the cluster with a soft satin
ribbon. “Grandfather arrives at Eastport on the nine forty-five train
from Portland, and I want to be there to meet him. So I think you girls
can all go up on the Orienta veranda and watch the start, and we can
join you there.”

“There won’t be any start before noon,” Kate answered. “Why can’t we all
meet the Admiral at Eastport and let everybody else know we are meeting
him. It’s an event for a little place like Eastport to catch a real
Rear-Admiral even if he is on the retired list, and we must let the town
know its honor. Let’s all carry blue and gold flags, and dress up in our
best, and salute him in state when the train pulls in.”

Polly enjoyed the plan, and they hurried with their dressing, then
walked out sedately into the little room that served as a dining-room.
Welcome’s face was immobile and unrelenting, but on the table there were
neither boiled eggs nor oatmeal. Crullers saw, and gave one glad cry.

“Girls, waffles!”

Now waffles are usually merely an adjunct to a full meal, but not
Welcome’s waffles. There was no room for other food. The girls ate
waffles with butter and sugar on them, and then waffles with honey on
them, then Polly tried some maple syrup, and Sue hunted up the
strawberry jam jar, and Ruth appeared with some marmalade.

“’Deed, an’ I nevah see sech appetites,” Welcome declared, her
indignation forgotten, as she stood over the cookstove, and guarded the
waffle iron, her old face smiling broadly. “Dat’s jest sixty-nine I done
cooked dis yere morning for you all, and I don’t see whar you puts ’em,
chillern.”

“It’s your own fault, Aunty,” Polly declared. “You make them so light
and nice, that when we eat them, they just evaporate.”

“Listen to her get ’round her mammy,” Welcome’s fat sides shook with
laughter, as she ladled out more. “Hyar goes seventy-one.”

Tom had agreed to drive over after them in the carry-all. Polly’s orders
had gone forth, and not a single boat was to be taken out on the bay
until the Junior race. She wanted them spick and span for the event of
the regatta, and even Dorothy and Bess’s boat, the _Nixie_, looked
weather-beaten beside the newly painted challengers of the Junior Cup.

“Who are the judges, Kate?” asked Ted, as they drove along the shore
road towards town. It had been a matter for calculation to get seven
girls into the carry-all besides the driver, but some way it had
happened. There was room for four people, and under pressure, five, but
when they picked up Nancy too, down at Fair Havens, there were nine
aboard, and the colts moderated their pace. Tom’s special pride in life,
next to his hope of being a life saver, was the colts. Sorrels they
were, and almost a perfect match to Ted’s red curls. The Captain had
owned them twelve years, and they had grown up with the children, so
they still called them the “colts.” And they had traveled that shore
road so often during those twelve years that the Captain declared he
shouldn’t be at all surprised to see them walk out of their stalls,
harness each other up, and start off alone at any time. As the two
trotted along the shore road together, they scattered a cloud of dust
behind, and their short manes caught the breeze like a t’gallant peak
flag, Tom said.

It was the first time the girls had all been to Eastport since their
arrival at Eagle Bay. It lay about two miles from the club house on
Orienta Point, and a quarter of a mile up the Inlet. A big lumber mill
off to one end of town hummed its song lazily. You could tell just what
the saw was doing from the tone, Sue said. First the sharp hiss as it
cut the bark, then a gradually rising buzz and hum, till there came the
crack as it fell apart. Off to the other side of the village lay the
railroad station. There were half a dozen buildings around the central
square of green, some low white houses, with their green blinds tightly
closed, and little garden patches out in front filled with sweet-scented
old-fashioned flowers.

“I was born over yonder,” Tom told them, pointing his whip at a little
house next the white church that occupied the north end of the green.
“So was Pa, and his Pa too, but now my Aunt Cynthy Bardwell lives there.
She’s got the finest rose garden in Eastport, and all the summer folks
come down here to buy her roses. She’s Pa’s only sister, and her husband
was a captain too, sailed a schooner up to the Gulf every year for over
forty years, and fell off the dock down here one day loading ties.”

“Doing what, Tom?” asked Polly, anxiously, as they stopped.

“Loading railroad ties from the saw mill yonder, to carry south. He was
just visiting around the docks and saw a tie slip into the river, and it
knocked off a little chap with it, Dicky Button, it was, and Uncle
Bardwell went in after him, and just then a boat come along, and her
swell swashed the schooner up against the dock, and when they got him
out he was dead, but Dicky’s alive.”

The girls listened and made up their minds they wanted to see the rose
garden then and there. It was only nine, Polly said, and the train
couldn’t possibly get through the village without everybody knowing it
was there. So Tom tied the colts to the hitching post, and they went in
to call on Mrs. Cynthy Bardwell.

Ruth started to walk up the front path, but Tom told her they had better
go around to the back door, so they followed him obediently along the
graveled path, bordered neatly with clam shells turned face downward in
the mould. Then came “old hen and chickens,” as Kate called them,
mignonette, sweet alyssium, marigolds, and <DW29>s. And in the center of
each bed there rose up stocks, pink and white, and so fragrant and
lovable, that the girls begged for some at once.

“Well, I do declare!” exclaimed a sweet, friendly voice so near to them
they nearly jumped. “I’m right here at the buttery window, girls, and I
saw you and Tom coming. Wait a minute till I change my apron.”

“It gave me quite a turn to see such a lot of youngsters in my garden so
early,” she told them, when she appeared, tying the strings of her apron
as she talked. “Come and see my roses.”

It seemed as if nothing but roses grew in that long back garden, shaded
with horse chestnut trees, excepting the tall lilac bushes along the
fence and the lilies of the valley that grew thickly on the ground
beneath them.

“They’ve gone by long ago,” Mrs. Bardwell said, “but they’re real sweet
in the spring.”

On the white and green trellis work above the kitchen portico, a crimson
rambler climbed sturdily to the “ell” roof. A sweetbrier hung over the
gate, with little white roses nearly gone. Then there were bushes of
old-fashioned blush roses, so delicately pink and sweet that Polly
declared all she could think of was her grandmother’s wedding chest at
home, with its flat silk bags of dried rose leaves, still heavy with
fragrance from roses that had bloomed half a century ago.

“Yes, they’re sweet, but I have a leaning towards the white brides,”
said Mrs. Bardwell, moving from bush to bush like a white bride herself,
with her silver white curls, pink cheeks, and fresh white apron. “And
the bees love them best too. They’re all gone by, now. I can generally
count on them along in June. The crimson rambler’s real hardy, but it’s
beginning now to shake its petals. I suppose you folks down south have
roses so much you hardly appreciate them, but we love them. Summer’s
kind of late up here, and I’ve had roses for my table clear to the end
of August. These here were American Beauties. I never tried them before
this year, but a man come along last fall and sorter talked me into
taking them, and they did bloom up real sightly, but terrible thorny.
This bush I raised from a slip my mother gave me the day I was married.
It’s a cabbage rose. ’Tain’t a pretty name, but I love the bush, and the
flower too. It looks more like a lot of little rosebuds all clustered
together than just one flower, don’t it? There’s moss roses down in that
corner by the fence, but they went by last month too. These here, they
call them Gloriana Wonders. I always feel like shaking them same as you
would a child that won’t behave. They bloom all to once, and just open
up their whole hearts in a day, and the wind blows them to Halifax.” She
laughed happily, touching the leaves with tender, lingering fingers as
you would the flushed cheek of a baby. “I suppose I’m foolish over them,
but they’re all I’ve got to love and care for now. I used to have five
babies of my own, and they’re all lying over yonder around their father,
the Captain, in the little cemetery across from the lighthouse, on the
east shore.”

“We haven’t been there yet,” Polly said, her dark eyes full of sympathy,
as she held the flowers that Aunt Cynthy clipped steadily while she
talked.

“Haven’t you? It’s real int’restin’,” answered the old lady cheerily. “I
like it better, somehow, than the new one down by the church. That was
built recently, thirty years ago, wasn’t it, Tom? The old one goes back
long before that, and I want to lie there, even if the graves be half
sunken, and some of the stones lopsided. I guess they sleep the long
sleep just as well. I had father and the children buried sorter opposite
from the way other folks do. I didn’t p’int them to the east and the
sunrise. I p’inted them due west, so they can look straight out over the
bay from the east shore of the channel. I know that’s the way they would
have liked it best. These here tea roses are real sweet and friendly,
don’t you think so? and lasting, too.”

“I think the whole garden is lovely,” cried Polly. “I just wish I could
reach out and hug them all. Seems as if I never saw such a garden
before.”

“Well, flowers are like children and friends. Give ’em love and care,
and plenty of fresh water, and they’ll love you back a hundred-fold.
Stop in any time, girls. Tom and Nancy are over every day or so, and
they always come to see me. I was born to mother something, and as long
as the dear Lord saw fit to gather my babies in his arms, I have to
mother the roses, and all the other babies, little and big, that come to
my garden, don’t you see?”

“Isn’t she a darling?” exclaimed Ruth, when they finally left the little
white cottage, and started over to the depot. Polly had coaxed and
coaxed until she had prevailed, and Mrs. Bardwell had promised to go
back with them to watch the races. The carry-all and its capacity had
been argued over, until Polly said the Admiral could get one of the
village teams and take Kate and Ruth with him.

Polly buried her nose in her bouquet, and just smiled and sighed all at
once.

“I’m too full for utterance, as Crullers says after dinner,” she
laughed. “But there’s one thing certain. I am coming back to that white
cottage again. Wait till we see Aunty Welcome’s face when she smells
these late roses. She was saying only yesterday that the only thing she
was homesick for were the roses at Glenwood. Listen. Oh, girls, there’s
the train whistle!”

She forgot everything except the dear grandfather who was on that train,
and before the rest could catch up with her, she started on a run
towards the little red station. It was an excursion train from Portland,
one that connected with the southern expresses and came up to Eastport
in honor of the regatta. Polly stood up on a wooden box near the express
office, and watched the outpouring of the crowds, men, women, and
children, all bearing lunch boxes, and all dressed in holiday and outing
clothes. But she could not see the Admiral anywhere. Finally, somebody
put an arm around her very quietly, and she turned to find the Admiral
smiling down on her.

“Oh, you dear, you precious old dear,” cried Polly, as she nearly
strangled him with her strong, young embrace. “I never even saw you
leave the train and I watched everyone.”

“Didn’t you see me riding on the engine so I’d be the first one off?”
the Admiral asked, teasingly, as he pinched her cheek. “I was up forward
in the smoker, mate. Where did you collect those freckles? Where are all
the other girls?”

“Here we are, sir,” Sue exclaimed, as they came up, breathlessly. “Polly
wouldn’t wait for us. She wanted to meet you first of all, so we let
her.”

“Let me?” repeated Polly, but the girls wouldn’t allow her to finish.

“You don’t know how she orders us around,” Ruth added.

“Does she?” The Admiral leaned back his head, and laughed in his deep,
hearty fashion. “And I am afraid I cannot do a thing about it. She’s the
Commodore, you understand, and if I had my choice between a kingship and
a commodore’s berth, for real sovereignty, I’d choose the berth. Where’s
the Doctor?”

The girls caught their breath, and their eyes fairly shone with interest
and subdued excitement. Polly laid her hands on the Admiral’s shoulders.

“Grandfather dear,” she exclaimed, solemnly, “do you know him?”

“Oh, but he’s a smuggler,” added Ted, mischievously. “He’s just
disguised as a doctor of something.”

“And he’s addicted to orange marmalade something terrible, Aunty Welcome
says,” Kate put in.

“But he’s got the finest Chili sauce over in the cave you ever tasted,
grandfather,” Polly concluded.

“Now, wait one moment, and let me catch my breath.” The Admiral put out
his hands to defend himself, as the girls all clustered around him, each
one eager to tell about the mystery of Smugglers’ Isle. “I mean Penrhyn
Parmelee Smith of Washington, D. C.”

“So do we,” came a united and positive chorus, “Washington, D. C., and
Eagle Bay. He lives right next door to us in a cave on an island.”

“God bless my heart and soul,” exclaimed the Admiral, and he took off
his glasses to wipe them, as he always did when he was startled. “I am
sure I have never been surprised but twice in twenty years. Once when
Welcome marched forcibly into my study and placed this person with the
freckles in my arms, and again to-day. And yet it may be true. It is
quite like Penrhyn to do such a thing. For a man in his sixty-sixth year
he is the most irresponsible, child-like creature I ever knew. Polly,
did you say orange marmalade?”

Polly nodded her head emphatically.

“He’s had six jars out of the ten we brought with us,” she replied,
solemnly. “Aunty declares it can’t hurt him one bit, but we don’t
believe he eats it himself. We think he uses it as bait to catch—what is
it, girls?”

“Polypi,” supplemented Ruth. “Polypi.”

More than one in the holiday crowd turned at the hearty laugh that broke
from the group around the stately old Admiral. And suddenly the girls
saw a figure approaching, whose white suit of flannel and white yachting
cap, they recognized at once.

“Admiral,” the Doctor fairly beamed as he put out his hand. “I salute
you.” He smiled his slow, dry smile that only drew down the corners of
his mouth, and stretched his dimples more, Polly declared. The Admiral
gripped his hand warmly.

“Polly, my dear, we went to college together,” he exclaimed. “Didn’t we,
Penny? Some day when you girls meet one another, and have grandchildren
beside you, perhaps you’ll look back and understand how we two old
fellows feel this minute; eh, Doctor? I think if I took a deep breath I
could give the grand old yell yet.”

“Don’t,” cautioned the Doctor. “It won’t do in Eastport. Polly would
hand us over to the authorities without a qualm. You don’t know how she
rules us.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” said the Admiral, merrily. “I’ve heard reports of it
already.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows lifted.

“Marmalade?” he queried, as he took Polly by one arm, and guided her
deftly through the crowd, the rest following. “I have to eat it, to keep
in their good graces.”

“You shall not have another jar after that,” Polly cried, severely.
“Wait till I tell Aunty Welcome. Where’s Tom with our carry-all? Oh, I
see him, over under the horse chestnuts at Aunt Cynthy’s.”

“Aunt Cynthy, Polly?” asked the Admiral. “Who is the lady?”

“She’s the mother of the roses,” Polly told him, mysteriously, as she
raised her bouquet for him to catch a whiff of its fragrance. “Tom’s
aunt. And she’s going back to the Orienta with us to watch the races.
Now, the carry-all won’t carry all, at all. It will just about carry
seven people.”

“I have a conveyance here some place,” spoke up the Doctor. “At least I
did have. I can take two with me. Wait just one minute.”

He disappeared around the corner, and came back driving a trim top
carriage.

“It’s the hotel keeper’s,” he told them. “I didn’t know these children
were coming to meet you in state, so I plotted to carry you off myself.
Now, I think I had best take Mrs. Bardwell with me, and the thinnest one
of the girls.”

“Thinnest!” exclaimed Sue. “Thinnest! You won’t find any thin people in
this club after six weeks on Lost Island. Crullers, won’t you please
ride with the Doctor, just as a matter of revenge?”

And Crullers, whose one strong point was her weight, agreed willingly to
share the seat with the doctor and Mrs. Bardwell.

It was a gay ride back along the bay shore road. The Doctor was an old
acquaintance of Aunt Cynthy’s, for he loved flowers and had often
stopped on his way to the post-office to look at her garden and chat
awhile over the white cross-bar fence.

When they arrived at the club house, the whole place seemed filled with
people. All of the summer colony had turned out in state to do honor to
the regatta, as well as the visitors. Up in the balcony that overhung
the bay, a band played, and the view out on the water was one the girls
never forgot all their lives.

After they had greeted the Commodore and Mrs. Vaughan, they found chairs
at a good angle of vision, and established themselves around Aunt Cynthy
as chaperon, while the Doctor and Admiral Page went out on the committee
boat.

The bay was brilliant in the sparkling morning sunshine. It was a
perfect day. Crullers said the sky looked higher than usual, and the
clouds drifted lazily up from the southwest. The great sails were
hoisted, and curved out in great white swells, as the wind filled them.
Orders rang out sharply, as the white-clad sailors ran here and there,
and finally the start was made at 11:02 sharp. One after another, eight
yachts dipped to the wind, crossed the imaginary line of starting, and
the fifteen-mile race was on.

“Oh, Polly, just think how we shall feel when we start like that,”
exclaimed Sue, excitedly. “Just look at the spread of canvas on that
last sloop. All I can think of is a sheet tacked to a shingle, by way of
comparison. Polly, Polly, watch her keel over as she catches the wash
from the others. Oh, isn’t it glorious!”

“Don’t gush so, child,” said Aunt Cynthy, placidly. “No sailor talks
that way at all. But ’tis a sightly lot of sail boats, and no mistake.
What’s the name of that last one?”

Dorothy leaned over her chair, happy and proud.

“That’s my father’s sloop, the _Adventure_,” she replied. “Mamma is with
him. They are waving to us, don’t you see?”

“And she’s the only lady in the race,” added Bess, her eyes full of love
and pleasure. “She loves it the same as we do.”

Polly leaned eagerly forward over the railing. She had handed the
glasses to Kate and Isabel. Her cap was off, and the breeze blew her
curls back from her forehead. Her lips were half parted, and her eyes
shining like stars as she watched the stately yachts cross the bay, and
make for the open channel to the sea.

“I don’t see how they can sail with a southerly wind,” Ted said. “Aren’t
they going to tack south as soon as they strike the ocean?”

“Well, we’re facing more southeast, than south, aren’t we, Polly?” Ruth
asked with one eye on the sun.

“Girls,” breathed Polly, tensely. “I don’t care a rap how we’re facing.
Watch the race, and stop your talking.”

“Spoken like a true sailor,” Aunt Cynthy echoed, warmly, and they all
turned to the railing to watch the yachts as one by one they slipped
through the channel, and the race was really on.




                              CHAPTER XIX

                            THE FIRST EVENT


It was late in the afternoon before the first sails of the returning
fleet appeared in the channel. All day long the girls had been honored
guests of the Orienta Club, and had enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
Although both Mrs. Vaughan and the Commodore were away on board the
_Adventure_, the other members and their wives had all heard about the
yacht club over on Lost Island, and were happy to meet the girls, and
see that they had a pleasant day of it.

“I think,” said Mrs. Allison, the chairman of the reception committee
for regatta week, “I think it would be nice for you to meet your
competitors in the race, the girls of the Junior Club. Let me see how it
can be best managed? There are six, no, eight, in your club, and nine in
the Juniors. Dorothy, will you just press that button behind you, dear?”
She smiled around at the circle of interested faces. “We will call the
club steward, and you may have a luncheon all by yourselves and get
acquainted.”

So it was arranged. Instead of the “girl element,” as the Doctor
laughingly dubbed the rival clubs, eating luncheon in the large
dining-hall with the other guests and members, they were given one of
the smaller side rooms all to themselves.

Dorothy and Bess acted as official hostesses, and there was a great
cluster of red and white carnations in a cut glass bowl for a
centerpiece, as red and white were the Orienta colors. Besides the
Vaughan girls, there were seven others, all daughters of club members,
and a delightful lot of girls, the rest decided.

“Only five of us are going to race, though,” said Connie Evans. “This is
my first year at the seashore. We always go up to the Adirondacks.
Father has a lodge up there, and it seems so strange not to be closed in
by the mountains. I never sailed a yacht until this season, and mine is
just a ‘cat’ with one sail.”

“Most of us have catboats,” replied Polly, reassuringly. “Mine is a
‘cat,’ too, and it is our first season with boats, so you need not be
afraid of racing against experts. I think it will be lots of fun. Can
you all swim?”

“No, we can’t, not one,” Bess declared. “We’ve been sand bathers this
summer, mamma says, and haven’t been in at all above our shoulders. But
I don’t think anything will happen, do you, Polly?”

“Polly believes that prevention is earth’s first law,” laughed Kate, as
she saw Polly shake her head doubtfully. “You had best put a lot of
buoys and life preservers in your boats.”

“What time would they have to put them on,” demanded Sue, “if they just
dropped into the water? I think it would be a good idea if we wore belts
like acrobats when they are training, with a ring in the back, and a
rope fastened to it. Then if we fell over all we would have to do would
be to hold on to the rope and be hauled in.”

“They say one of the men from the Station is to be on guard at the pier
all day, and they will watch from the Point too.”

“That’s all right,” Crullers broke in, wistfully, “but if you fall
overboard, you’ll swallow salt water enough to drown ten cats, before
they have time to get to you; I know from experience.”

“Let’s not even think it may happen,” said Polly, happily. “Dorothy,
couldn’t we have the Cup on the table just as a reminder?”

Dorothy thought perhaps they might, and after a consultation with the
steward the Junior Cup was borne in state into the room, and set in the
place of honor at the head of the table between Dorothy and Polly, the
two commodores.

“Day after to-morrow,” said Sue, thoughtfully regarding it, “I shall go
home with that under my arm.”

“Listen to her, girls,” Kate cried. “And remember what I prophesy. The
_Patsy D._ will finish fifth, while the _Witch Cat_ glides over the line
first.”

Polly said nothing. From her seat beside Dorothy, she looked at the
beautiful silver cup and thought of the race. She had said she was a
good sportsman, as the Admiral wished her to be, and she was sure she
could see the Cup go to the best yacht without any feeling of envy, but
she almost wished there might have been nine consolation prizes, for
something seemed to tell her that the _Pirate_ would be the winner.
There was something different about Tom’s big knockabout, and the daring
way that Nancy sailed her, that left the other boats out in the cold.
Nancy knew the bay well. She was used to every ripple on it, every turn
of the tide, every breath of wind, every mood and whim that passed over
it like cloud shadows. And she knew, too, the trim, slender boat as she
might some live, tamed animal that loved her. The Cup would mean a great
deal more to her than to the other girls. Most of them came from
well-to-do families, and they themselves were happy, normal city-bred
girls, who had had plenty of amusement and novelty in their lives, while
Nancy had spent all of hers in the little gray cottage that listed to
leeward on Fair Havens’ beach. She had never even been inside the
Orienta until the girls took her with them, and now that she was there
and had a chance of winning the Cup, she seemed like another girl. While
the rest chatted and laughed, she sat quietly by, but Polly caught her
glance now and then, and the quick, wistful smile, and she knew what she
was thinking about. Once, when Dorothy rose to make a little speech,
Polly closed her eyes for a second, in a half-expressed prayer that if
it were right for Nancy to win the race, she herself might be willing
and glad to have her.

“But you’re not,” she told herself, after the luncheon, when they all
went down to the beach to walk and pass the time. Her chin was raised,
her brown eyes troubled, but she smiled in the old bright way, and
laughed with the rest, even while she thought: “You’re not glad, Polly
Page, that Nancy has even a little bit of a chance against the _Tidy
Jane_, and you want the Cup with all your heart, and you know perfectly
well that if Nancy were not in the race, you could win it.”

“Polly, you look just like the Winged Victory with the wind blowing back
your hair and dress that way,” called Ruth.

“I wouldn’t allow such a comparison,” Kate declared. “Polly, it doesn’t
have any head, you know.”

But Polly smiled and waved her hand at them, and said nothing. Nancy was
walking beside her, and she wondered whether a true sportsman ever
allows sentimental reasons to outweigh his sense of fairness, whether it
was wrong for her to hope with all her heart that she might win the race
when Nancy had set all her hopes on it.

“Father says that if I should win the Cup,” Nancy whispered, happily, as
she slipped her arm through Polly’s, “he’ll build me a knockabout for
next year just like Tom’s. And just think, if you girls hadn’t let me
come into your club, I couldn’t have raced at all. Aren’t things queer,
Polly?”

“Curious and curiouser,” smiled back Polly, remembering the expression
of one of her favorite heroines. The Doctor and Mrs. Bardwell were
walking towards them, with several of the club members, and they all
strolled down to the pier to watch for the incoming yachts. At just
four-thirty-two by the Doctor’s watch, the first boat hove in sight
around the Point. She was too far away for them to distinguish her
identity, but hardly had she come about and started on the new stretch
than a larger yacht appeared, following hard in her wake.

“That’s the _Thistle_,” cried Dorothy. “I know the cut of her sails. Oh,
dear, I wonder if the other is papa’s?”

“The _Thistle’s_ crowding on more sail, and gaining,” Polly exclaimed,
watching them through glasses. “She will win!”

“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Bardwell rejoined cheerily. “A race is never won
till it’s done, you know, so hope to the finish.”

There were three in sight now, one following the other as closely and
evenly as flying geese, but still the _Thistle_ strove to the fore. That
first mile up the bay, the girls hardly spoke, as they leaned over the
iron chain that was stretched along the pier for safety. Their eyes were
bright, their lips half-parted as they tried to watch every swerve,
every manœuvre on the part of the racers. All at once Bess declared she
knew the first vessel was the _Adventure_ because there was a lady on
deck, and she had waved to her.

“Bess Vaughan,” laughed Polly, “you make me think of the soldier in the
fairy tale who was a sharpshooter and could aim at a fly on the limb of
a tree five miles off. That boat is a mile and a half from us now.”

“Just you wait and see,” Bess retorted seriously. “Maybe it wasn’t her
handkerchief, but I know it’s the _Adventure_.”

“Oh, girls,” exclaimed Isabel, excitedly. “See the big one dip
sideways.”

“Sideways, child,” Aunt Cynthy repeated, merrily. “To leeward, dear
heart, to leeward.”

Even at that distance it appeared as if the larger yacht had the best
chance.

“I’m sure they could crowd on more sail,” Dorothy said, helplessly. “Why
don’t they do it? Tom says there’s always room for another reef some
place on a sloop.”

“That’s just what’s happening this minute,” Kate said. “The _Thistle_
has every inch on she can carry, and there’s still over a mile to go.”

“Polly, if that old New York boat should win, I shall lie down on the
sand, and simply, simply—” Isabel hesitated for lack of an apt
expression, but Ted filled it in for her calmly.

“Suspire. And be sure and do it very quietly, Isabel, so as not to
disturb the race.”

Isabel laughed good-humoredly with the rest. The six weeks’ vacation at
Lost Island had helped her in many ways. She would always be more
precise than the other girls, more attentive to the formalities of life,
as Miss Calvert expressed it, but the hearty, daily companionship and
example set by the rest had filed down many sharp little points in her
character. At Calvert Hall both Ted and Sue had loved to tease her, but
someway she did not mind it any more. She could laugh back at them like
Kate or Polly now, and it was rarely that one of “Isabel’s grumbles” was
heard. “Lady Vanitas” she would always be, for she dearly loved pretty
clothes and dainty things. Sue had expressed her ideas on dress aptly
one day when she had remarked that Isabel couldn’t even wear a sweater
at basket ball unless it had a fancy border to it and a stickpin in
front. Even to-day the brim of her white duck yachting cap was pinned
jauntily back with a class pin, while the other girls had turned theirs
down to keep the sun out of their eyes. It seemed as if Isabel’s collar
never wilted under the hottest sun, her belt never sagged out of place,
and her shoe strings never came untied. Polly’s eyes always lingered
over this member of her crew approvingly, for she, too, loved neatness
and good taste.

All of the club verandas were thronged with onlookers during that final
half hour. Both boats were hesitating under a vagrant puff of adverse
wind, when suddenly the _Adventure_ seemed to get under way and slipped
steadily down the course, ahead of her New York rival. Something white
fluttered from her deck, and all of the girls waved their handkerchiefs
wildly in response. Somewhere back in the crowd on shore a boy’s voice
shouted:

“Come along, _Adventure_, come along there!”

The girls laughed, for they knew it must be Tom, losing his head at the
critical moment. The little sloop held gallantly to the point she had
gained, and glided finally over the imaginary line that ended the
course, while cheer on cheer rang out from the club house and the shore
away up to the hotel. The cup would remain with the Orienta Club for
another season.

After the shouts had at last died away, and the fussy little committee
launch had puffed back and forth among the returning yachts, the girls
took their leave, and started homeward, with the Admiral and the Vaughan
girls in tow. The Doctor had undertaken to return Mrs. Bardwell safely
to the house of the roses, and she declared as she kissed each girl that
it had been the first day she had spent in society in twenty years.

“Bless her,” Polly said tenderly, as she watched the Doctor tuck the tan
lap robe about her. “She doesn’t know what a nice ‘society’ she is all
by herself.”

“Admiral Page,” interposed Ted, gravely, “isn’t Polly sentimental?”

“All sailors should be,” rejoined the Admiral, his eyes twinkling. “Not
exactly sentimental, but full of sentiment, eh, Polly, mate?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Polly, but she was thinking of something else,
thinking of Nancy and the Junior Cup.

Aunty Welcome lived up to her name in the dinner that she had prepared
for her “Marse Bob.” Polly had declared the dining-room in the cottage
was too small for such a festive occasion, so dinner was served in state
out on the porch. It was an evening they all remembered out of a long,
happy summer-time. Two small tables set together made quite a commodious
banquet board. Aunt Cynthy’s bouquets, freshened up after a good drink
of water, made a pretty centerpiece, with the blue and gold yacht club
pennant waving above it. The Admiral insisted on Polly taking the head
of the table with Kate, as club chaperon, at the foot.

“I am merely a guest,” he said, “and will sit at the Commodore’s right
hand, if she will permit.”

Long after the sun went down, the little dinner party went on, until the
moon rose, and the bay lay like a sea of quicksilver and jet below them.
Then they heard the sound of wheels along the shore road, and Tom’s long
cheery hail, and the Admiral rose to take his leave.

“To-morrow,” he told them, “you had better stay right here and rest. The
day’s event is for twenty-footers and over, and they have a long course
to cover. I’ll run over in the afternoon and see how you are. Tom or the
Captain will go over the yachts with me, for I want to be sure
everything is shipshape.”

Dorothy and Bess had returned with the girls, and as it was their first
night at Lost Island, there were whisperings and smothered laughter long
after the official “taps” had been sounded.

“What’s ‘taps’?” echoed Ted when Bess asked what they meant. “Just
listen.”

Out in the kitchen Aunty Welcome’s steady footfalls could be heard as
she moved around, locking the door, winding the clock, humming a sweet
old camp-meeting tune under her breath, and finally stepping to the foot
of the stairs, to blow out the bracket lamp that hung there.

“You all keep still, now, and go to sleep, and say your prayers, like
good chilluns, you hyar me?” she asked forcibly. There was a dead
silence, supposed to come only from heavy sleepers. As soon as she had
gone to her own room, Ted’s head rose from the couch, and she whispered:

“That’s ‘taps’.”




                               CHAPTER XX

                      THE WINNER OF THE JUNIOR CUP


They took the Admiral’s advice the next day, and rested. Dorothy and
Bess were anxious to look over the shells and specimens the girls had
found during the summer, and helped arrange them for the home going the
end of the week. The two shell curtains that Kate and Isabel had made
were completed, and ready to be shipped by express, with some of the
heavier shells.

Crullers had surprised everybody by finding out a new way to use the
small shells in decoration. She had had quite a taste for drawing and
applied design at school, and now had glued the shells to heavy
cardboard, after first tracing out a decorative design. The effect was
surprisingly unique and attractive. Ted had looked at the result with a
speculative eye, but she was generous with her praise, and frank spoken.

“I never thought old Crullers had such a knack in her fingertips,” she
said.

“Didn’t you?” Polly asked, smiling. “I always knew that she loved
beautiful things, and when you do you’ll generally make something
beautiful yourself to add to it, don’t you know?”

“I know what you mean,” Ted agreed, pushing back her red curls
restlessly. “Fraulein called it the personal quality in art, the gift of
expression. What was that old painter’s name who used such a wonderful
red in his pictures, and when he died they found it was his heart’s
blood he had been painting with. I guess that’s personal expression,
isn’t it? I haven’t any, Miss Calvert says. I haven’t any artistic
sense.”

“We all have it,” Polly insisted. “You cannot help but have it, because
it’s the gift of yourself. What do you like to do more than anything
else in the world?”

Ted meditated, then her face brightened.

“Travel,” she said. “Walk, ride, swim, run, sail, do anything as long as
I’m going some place.”

Polly laughed heartily.

“That’s what the Captain says about you, that you won’t stay put,” she
said.

The Captain had come down to the island in the afternoon and gone over
the racing boats carefully with Tom and the Admiral. Finally they had
pronounced everything “fit,” as the Captain said, and started to go when
Polly asked for an opinion as to which one stood the best chance of
winning the race.

“With a fair wind and tide, anyone of them is liable to win,” the
Captain declared flatly. “They’re the knowingest lot of boats on the
bay, anyhow. Start them properly, and lash their tillers, and I’d be
surprised if they didn’t start and race by themselves.”

There were light appetites at breakfast the next morning.

“Mah sakes alive,” protested Aunty, “how you spec you going to win any
race and old silver cup an’ saucer, lessen you get good inside linings
so your ribs don’t stick together, honeys?”

But it was no use. Chocolate and toast was the repast, and then they
dressed for the race. The start was to be at ten from the Orienta. Bess
and Dorothy crossed the bay on the _Tidy Jane_ with Polly, then took
their own yacht. The girls had precious little to say to each other.
Just before the moment of starting, Commodore Vaughan made them a little
speech from the deck of the committee launch, commending them highly for
their ardor in outdoor sport, and the spirit of good fellowship that
existed among them all.

“There is a double emulation in all this,” he remarked. “This is a race
between two clubs, and a race between individuals as well. You may beat
the Juniors, or the Juniors may beat the Polly Page Club, but besides
that you will win or lose from each other, even as members of the same
club. I wish you a fair wind and all success.” He glanced at his watch,
hesitated, and just on the touch of the hands at ten, gave the signal
for the start.

Sue was the first to gain. For some reason Polly and Nancy blundered in
the get-away. It looked as if each had tried to give the other one the
advantage in the start, but as they all slipped down the bay they looked
like a flock of white winged sea birds, flying low.

South they sailed towards Lost Island and Aunty Welcome came out on the
porch and waved a tablecloth at them excitedly, so they would feel
encouraged. The committee boat puffed behind, and picked up two of the
Juniors at the end of the first mile, when they became confused over
tacking around the small islands. Nancy was ahead now with the _Pirate_,
and Kate’s _Witch Cat_ second, with the _Nixie_ pushing her way steadily
towards them. When they passed Smugglers’ Island, the Doctor was waiting
for them in his motor boat, and the _Natica_ joined the committee yacht
as a sort of marine rear guard.

To Polly the first five miles seemed like a dream. She could feel the
_Tidy Jane_ spring to the touch of the waves, and her heart seemed to
leap with it. When they neared the Point, she saw the white-clad crew
come down from the station, and caught the hearty cheer they sent
ringing over the water to the girl sailors.

Nancy hardly stopped long enough to wave back at them. The turn in the
course came at the end of the Point, and she hardly thought about it, so
intent was she on speed, until all at once Polly came steadily up behind
her, passed Ted and Sue, Kate, and the others, and made the tack with
hardly any pause.

“That’s Polly’s best trick in yachting,” Ted thought, with a big throb
of admiration. “She sees it coming, and is ready to let go her main
sheet on the instant, and come about. And then she goes after the cup
a-flying.”

It was true. In that last joyous spurt ahead, all thought of Nancy left
her. There was only the beautiful stretch of sky, and wind and waves
calling to her. Her cap fell off in the bottom of the cock pit, and she
lost her hair ribbon. The wind caught her long curls and blew them about
as it pleased, as she leaned forward, keen eyed, intent on every point
that needed watching. And finally, away down the bay, she caught the
sound of cheers and wondered what the matter was.

“It must be Nancy catching up with me,” she thought, but one name on the
wind caught her ear, one name shouted over and over and over.

“The _Tidy Jane_, the _Tidy Jane_, the _Tidy Ja-a-ane!_”

How they shouted it, and dwelt on it, and hung to it, until the echoes
flung it back from the big bluffs above the shore, but all at once
something happened. Polly did not realize it herself, until she caught
sight of Nancy’s face, brave and sweet, but deadly white.

Not twenty feet away from the _Tidy Jane_, the prow of the knockabout
came about, as Nancy tried her best to overtake her rival. Down on the
shore they could hear Tom’s voice shouting,

“Come along, Nance, come along in.”

To Nancy it was the final touch of the spur. She forgot Polly, forgot
everything, except the fame of the _Pirate_, and the Junior Cup. She
measured the end of the course with a steady, practiced eye, and her
distance from the _Tidy Jane_. Nobody but Polly saw how she did it, and
even she did not understand the craft of it. It had been a fragment of
the Captain’s teaching long ago.

“When the wind and the tide’s agin your making a certain point, jam her
down hard into the teeth of it, and give your tiller two sharp turns,
hard to port then hard to starboard, and she’ll come up handsomely.”

Straight for the pier the _Pirate_ turned, and then came about, and made
for the end of the course.

The other yachts were strung out behind, Dorothy beating up closely,
Connie Evans and Sue last of all, and the rest dotting the bay between
the _Pirate_ and the _Tidy Jane_.

Polly saw the way Nancy had caught up to her, and for the minute she
held her breath. All at once she knew that she was going to lose the
race, and the strangest part of it was, she could see Nancy win, and
feel a great wave of joy over it. As the _Pirate’s_ boom passed her, she
slackened her own main sheet, turned her head and smiled at Nancy, and
the first cheer that went up for the winner of the Junior Cup, was when
Polly stood up, and waved her hand with a clear,

“Hurrah! Hurrah!”

Tom promptly stood on his head, as the shouts rang out over the bay, and
shore. The Admiral himself helped Nancy out as if she had been a queen.

“You did handsomely, little girl, handsomely,” he said.

Polly was hardly a minute behind her, and as she too reached the Orienta
pier, and tossed her rope up to the willing hands, she threw her arms
around the victor.

“I am _so_ glad you’ve won, Nancy,” she said. “You don’t know how glad.”

“So am I,” answered Nancy, softly, her glance seeking one face out of
all the crowd. “Where’s father?”

“Here I be, mate!” called the old skipper, joyously, and right there
before the crowd, he swung Nancy up in his arms, and kissed her proudly.

Just then the Commodore himself appeared, and he bore the fateful cup.
Blushing, and with downcast lashes, Nancy listened to the presentation
speech. She couldn’t quite catch it all, but there was one expression
that lingered. He called her a daughter of the old Pine Tree State, who
had borne off a trophy that should remind her not only of a deserved
victory but also of the friendship and fellowship of the sister club,
the Orienta Juniors.

“Neatly put,” said the old Admiral, as they journeyed back home, and for
the first time he was a guest on the _Tidy Jane_. “Nancy, you’re a
conquering heroine, my dear, like your namesake, Nancy Lee, and the
Captain, and Polly and I are proud of you.”

When they reached Lost Island, the Doctor detained Polly a moment at the
landing, while the others went on to the house. “I have a trophy for the
second in the race, one that is given jointly by Father Neptune and
myself,” he said, as he reached his hand into his pocket mysteriously,
then held it out to Polly. On the open palm lay one of the pearls from
Ceylon.

“Just in memory of many happy days and many jars of marmalade,” he
smiled, as Polly took it, speechless and radiant. “And I want to tell
you a secret. You accused me, Miss Polly, of using marmalade as bait.
But I never did anything of the kind. Don’t laugh, now. What I did do
was to eat it and imbibe courage and peace and a settled happiness from
the atmosphere of Lost Island, so that I have triumphed. I am going back
to Washington this week myself. I have found the polypi!”

Two days remained to the girls, but they were so taken up in packing,
and preparing Aunty Welcome for the trip back South, that they passed
swiftly. Saturday morning the carry-all bore them over to Eastport, but
it had to make two trips, and each time it stopped at Fair Havens, where
Mrs. Carey and Nancy said goodbye to the girls, and the Captain waved
them a salute.

“It has been the best summer I ever had,” Nancy cried, as she shook
hands with them all, and kissed the girls and Aunty too. “You’ve been so
good to me, and given me such a happy time, that I just can’t thank
you.”

“We’ve got the Junior Cup up on the parlor mantel,” added Tom proudly,
“right under mother’s framed marriage certificate, and father’s model of
his first schooner. And Nancy sticks a bouquet of fresh posies in it
every morning, girls.”

Nancy blushed radiantly, and kissed Polly a second time.

“Sometimes I wonder if you let me win,” she whispered. “You held up a
little I thought, there at the very last.”

“Did I?” laughed Polly. “It was because I was so glad and surprised when
I saw the old _Pirate_ nosing her way past me, that was all. Goodbye,
dear. Don’t forget us.”

“Fair wind and tide to you wherever you sail, mates,” the Captain
called; and there were tears in the girls’ eyes as they watched the last
view of the little shore cottage, and the two figures there at the
garden gate, the Captain with the wind blowing back his curly hair, as
sturdy, as tall, and as storm-proof as one of the pines up on Bald
Mountain.

“Girls, it’s been the happiest summer I’ve ever had,” cried Ruth as she
put her head on Polly’s shoulder, and wept.

But Polly laughed in her old cheery way.

“Cheer up,” she said. “It won’t be the last. Turn around, like a good
fellow, and wave a salute back at the old flag pole, and to Nancy, bless
her.”

So they all stood up in the old carry-all at that last turn in the old
shore road, and solemnly, hopefully, lovingly saluted the last glimpse
of Lost Island, and the winner of the Junior Cup.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Polly Page Yacht Club, by Izola L. Forrester

*** 