“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.”