Allan and McConnell brought forth their cameras and looked them over as a huntsman might his gun, or a fisherman his rod.
“I want to make some shore pictures,” said McConnell, “with long, quivering reflections in the water.”
“And a white sail,” added Allan, “somewhere against the green of the shore.”
“And a man in a small boat in the foreground,” Owen offered in supplement.
All of these elements seemed to be present at one time or another. The shore was rich in interesting bits. The river-sailing craft gleamed in the mellow early sun. From private docks and invisible coves small boats drifted into the open. It was a fresh, buoyant morning. During the short run to the point the boys had fixed upon for another landing, the breeze became still more energetic, and the boys were delighted with the spirited way the Arabella behaved when Allan brought her up into the wind preparatory to landing.
With the breeze blowing inshore, they dropped anchor and landed from the stern. After all three had clambered out with their cameras, Owen and Allan went aboard again, lowered the sail, and drew a stern line to a boulder on shore.
From the point where they had landed, the river looked beautiful indeed. Ruffled by the wind, the river had no placid lines of reflection save in the turns of the shore, but the changing lines of the water under the tumbling white clouds, the smudge of New York’s smoke far away to the south, the variegated river craft, coal and ice barges, tow-boats, lighters, river steamers, ferries; the gulls circling from the white of the clouds to the white of the steamers’ wake—these were sights to make a boy reach for his camera now and then, until it seemed that no more plates could be devoted to the river.
They climbed to the brow of the bluff, a picturesque, wooded place, and discussed a view-point for a picture which should have a queer twist of the rocks and trees for a foreground, and for the distance the blue crest of the Palisades with the blue-green river between.
“With the breeze like this,” said Allan to Owen, “I shouldn’t want to try tripod work just here.”
Owen had just returned from a little run overland, where he found a waterfall and an abandoned bit of orchard. Presently the three boys followed the line of the bluff to the north, and at a distance of a quarter of a mile they came upon what at first seemed like an abandoned hut, but which turned out to have for an inhabitant a queer old man, who sat just within the open door smoking a pipe.