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 pansies. 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.