“Dry as a bone,” he shouted back, exultant; but as I came up he added, with his usual conservatism, “of course we can’t tell what she may do when she’s loaded.”
But our work held. For the rest of the trip we had a dry boat, except for what came in over the sides.
Now that we were in the home State, we got out our guns and hugged the shore closely, on the lookout for plover. We drifted sometimes, while we studied our maps for the location of the salt marshes. If we were lucky, we had broiled birds for luncheon or supper; if we were not, we had tinned stuff, which is distinctly inferior. When we spent the night at an inn, we breakfasted there, but most of our [pg 201] meals were eaten along the shore, or, best of all, on some island.
“Can we find an island for lunch to-day, do you suppose?” I usually asked, as we dipped our oars in the morning.
“Do you have to have an island for lunch?”
“I love an island!” choosing to ignore the jest. “That’s one of the best things about a boat—that it takes you to islands.”
“Now, why an island?”
“You know as well as I do. An island means—oh, it means remoteness, it means quiet—possession; while you’re on it, it’s yours—you don’t have every passer-by looking over your shoulder—you have a little world all to yourself.”
I could feel Jonathan’s indulgent smile through the back of his head as he rowed.
“Well, you know yourself,” I argued. “Even a tiny bit of stone and earth, with moss on it, and a flower, out in the middle of a brook, looks different, somehow, from the same things on the bank. It is different—it’s an island.”