Things and thoughts are on such a large scale in America, even in the East (though the Goodriches don't see it!), that nobody seems astonished at the bigness of the said nice red ferryboat. To my British Jack, however, it loomed enormous for the smallness of its "job"—just running between the mother island and her baby islet! But when he realized just what the job in question was, he changed his mind about its being a small one. Our cavalcade was only an insignificant unit (as they say in war) among the force of motors which mobilized as the moment for the boat's departure came. There was a regular regiment at last; also lots of horses drawing old-fashioned gigs and quite smart "buggies," and capacious carts; crowds of passengers on foot, women and children, young men and girls—so pretty, some of the shopgirls on holiday pointed out to us by the man we bought tickets of. They might have been princesses by their exactly right clothes (right at first glance, anyhow) and their proud air, if you hadn't seen them chewing gum and heard them saying "Huh?" to their young men. By the way, that ticket man was the dearest old thing, who very likely had never seen New York. He grew his beard under his chin like a kind of muffler, and said broad-mindedly while we were waiting that he didn't care "what people's religion was, so long as they went to their church twice every Sunday, rain or shine." We tried to look as if we did, because we liked him so much. He'd been a sailor in his day, and was proud of Greenport for its past—a fascinating, whaling past.
In spite of the crowd (bigger I'm sure than aboard the Ark, packed though it was to supply a new world with living creatures) there was room for us all, and there was room in the bay for our hugeness, among the flight of snow-white butterflies pretending to be sailboats.
Six minutes getting across; and then we touched at a gay little landing-place as different from that of serious, serene Greenport as the ex-sailor's own church would be from a thé dansant. I suppose when other sea-going men of old made money and grew just a little, little bit frivolous, they thought no more of whales, but moved across that bright stretch of water and spent their riches building pretty houses for their children to enjoy. "Shelter Island" is a charming name for a place to rest in after a strenuous life, don't you think? And the homes to forget whales in are peaceful as days of Indian Summer after storms. The finest, and perhaps the newest ones, which have nothing to do with memories of adventure with grand old monsters of the deep, are on Shelter Island Heights. But I should rather live lower down in some house yellow as a pat of butter, under great drooping trees. By the way, Shelter Island's maiden name was Ahaquatuwamuck. No wonder she changed it. She had to! Incidentally an Indian chief, Yokee, delivered "unto Capitanie Nathaniel Sylvester and Ensigne John Booth one turfe with a twige in their hands," which meant giving the English possession according to a custom very cannily established by the British. Then poor dear "Yokee and all his Indians did freely and willingly depart." I don't believe a word of the willingly! They were just hypnotized!
We meant to have only a look round, and go on by another ferry to Sag Harbor, thence to arrive at Easthampton. But what do you think happened? Tom, Dick, and Harry's preposterous Hippopotamus broke out in an eruption of flame at the very moment when our procession was passing in review before a large beflagged hotel which faces the Bay. Of course it had never occurred to the boys to bring one of those patent extinguishers which all thoughtful automobiles wear now as a matter of course. And I suppose that (at best) they would have done the Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego act if Peter Storm hadn't heard yells and dashed back with paraphernalia from Pat's car. Jack dashed also, but Peter (I call him so behind his back) was nearer, and hadn't been wounded. In three minutes the Hippopotamus was grinning with her mouth wide open, and the fire out, but looking exactly like one of those uncouth beasts you see in frescoes of the Inferno, in ancient monasteries abroad.
All the people in the world were on the wide veranda of that immense hotel, gazing at the free show, and we'd have sold ourselves bag and baggage for about thirty cents. It is a gray-shingled hotel trimmed with white, and battalions of rocking-chairs, mobilized in soldierly ranks, were all left rocking wildly at the top of their voices, their occupants had sprung up so suddenly. It did give a ghostly effect, as if the spirits of vanished guests had seized the chairs and begun visibly to use them the instant their rivals in the flesh were out!
If you fancy that we were able to escape from the eyes and the rocking-chairs without further pain, that shows how little you know the Hippopotamus. Being on fire had given it heart-failure or something. There it stood in front of the hotel, preventing any one else from driving up, till the animal's blushing keepers had pushed it to one side, and we were too noble to pretend we weren't acquainted with it, or even to go on and let it follow. We'd started in the morning, though we had practically no run to make, because we wanted nearly all of one day to potter about Easthampton, seeing sights. But it ended in our having lunch at Shelter Island. The dining-room of that hotel was big enough to hold nearly every one in New York, and most of the inhabitants of that and other large cities seemed to be there. I never saw so many "types" in my life, as one haughtily says in the Casino at Monte Carlo. Most of the girls were pretty, but there were people of all sorts of shapes and sizes; and you can't conceive how the pretty, just right ones, back in rocking-chairs on the veranda after luncheon, looked at the plain, just wrong ones who ventured to amble past them in humble quest of other chairs. Good gracious me! I wouldn't have run that gauntlet for any prize less than winning Jack's love, unless I simply adored my own clothes and features!
Toward two o'clock we got away, still feeling as if we'd been pawed over and rejected in a bargain sale. But though eyes stared coldly, flags waved over the hotel as if in our honour, music played, and breezes blew. All the same we were quite glad to get to a peaceful, countrylike ferry which would take us from the island of humiliation to a harbour where no one would know what had happened—namely, Sag Harbor on the right or lower claw, according to Jack, or the left leg, according to me.
There's a perfect flotilla of miniature islands in between the claws, and people live on them or spend summers on them. I should like to buy them all, because I couldn't be sure which I should like best, and whichever I had, I should know the ones I hadn't were nicer.
This was a wee ferryboat, almost as wee as the things you cross lochs in, in the Highlands of Scotland, but it hadn't so much the air of that being its day to tip over—which was a comfort. As for Sag Harbor, don't make the mistake of supposing that it sagged in any untidy way at the edges, or anything dull like that. Could you call a place dull which was first heard of historically in connection with a reward for killing wolves? There's a dear old town not far from the ferry. In its sedate middle-age it was a great whaling place, and is still crammed full of sea captains' descendants who are, in their turn, crammed full of fascinating stories of old days of great adventure, just as their serene-looking, aged houses are crammed full of shells and coral and other ocean-borne treasures from the far corners of the world. Any of these people (we met some) can tell you that "Sagg" Harbor or the "Harbor of Sagg" (it's dropped the "g," as lots of smart people do in England!) came from the word Sagma, or chief. Jack likes to believe that, just as he likes to find a romantic connection between Sagma, chief, or great man, and saga, or great song. But there are other less picturesque suggestions. If you'd seen what a fine old place Sag Harbor is, you'd hate to think it owed its name to a mere ground-nut the Indians called "Sagabon," or, still worse, "sagga," "thick-growing," which these ground-nuts were: "tubers big as eggs and good as potatoes, 40 on a string, not two inches underground."
Poor Jack simply stubbed his brain against the hardest of these Indian words at first, but now he has developed an almost inconvenient passion for them. When he looks at me steadily, and I think he is about to exclaim a sonnet to my eyebrow, he bursts out: "Tomahawk comes from 'tumetah-who-uf,' he who cuts off with a blow"; or, "Syosset sounds Indian, but is Dutch in origin. It came from 'Schouts'—'sheriff'"; and so on. I never know when I'm safe, but I'm as pleased as he is with the old Long Island place-names, English as well as Indian. Lots of them seem to tell as much about their meanings in a few syllables as an intimate chapter of history; Forge River, Sachem's House, Canoe Place, Baiting Hollow, Execution Rocks, Harbor Hill, South Manor, Bethpage, and a whole pink and green mapful of others. Of course Jamesport was named after horrid old King James the Second, when the Island was under English rule; and every governor and grandee must have a place named after himself! But those names I've jotted down do call up pictures of life in the first settlers' days, don't they?