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,

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 cripples 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:

“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 colored 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:

“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.