It was a good hour’s run across the Bay and up the entrance to a creek which Dick the adventurous had discovered the week before. As the boat entered the creek they saw the waves rushing in a mad race to fill up the little basin before it should be high water; when they would as madly begin to rush out again, after the excitable manner of tides.
“It wasn’t like this yesterday afternoon,” said Dick proudly. “Why, it’s finer even than I thought!”
“You came at low tide, you land-lubber,” said Hugh. “You forget the difference the tide makes in morning and afternoon.”
A queer look came over Dick’s face. “That’s so,” he admitted. “But isn’t this pretty?”
They agreed that it certainly was. Along the tide-rapids great rocks were half-uncovered, and on these were little brown heads bobbing, smooth grey bodies rolling over and over in ecstatic somersaults.
“Oh what is it? What is it?” cried the Twins, popping out of the cabin when they heard the girls exclaim.
“It’s baby seals,” said Hugh. “They are doing their daily gymnastics, just as you do, Kids. I expect it’s like the setting-up exercises we had in the Army, eh, Victor?”
“I should call them sitting-down exercises,” laughed Victor.
“Maybe they are just breakfast rolls,” whispered Dick to Anne, who giggled, in spite of Nancy’s growl of protest at such punning, which the Club had agreed was not to be encouraged.
“What a place for a picnic!” cried Tante as they passed a beautiful point where the water was most rapid and where a group of pines overhung the tide, “Can’t we stop here, Dick?”