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.