"We might toss up to see who shall take whom," suggested Brinsley, who had been unusually silent during the greater part of dinner.
"In how many ways can you arrange six people in couples?" asked Fanny.
Nobody succeeded in solving the question, of course. Even Elizabeth Miner, who was considered the clever member, gave it up in despair.
"Never mind!" said Fanny. "We'll see how it turns out when we get down to the landing-stage. These things always arrange themselves."
To the surprise of every one except Fanny herself, the arrangement turned out to be such that she and Miss Cordelia went together in the skiff pulled by the sailor, while Brinsley and Lawrence each took one of the other Miss Miners.
"We'll change by and by," said Fanny, as her boat shoved off first to show the way. "Keep close to us in the crowd when we get over."
The distance from the landing, across the harbour, through the channel between Bar Island and Sheep Porcupine to the Canoe Club, is little over half a mile; but at night, amidst a crowd of steamers, large and small, row-boats, canoes, and sail-boats,—the latter all outside the channel,—it took twenty minutes to reach the place where the fireworks were to be.
Fanny leaned back beside her cousin, and watched the lights in silence. Yellow, green, and red, they streamed across the brilliant black water in every direction, the yellow rays fixed or moving but slowly, the others gliding along swiftly above their own reflection, as the paddle steamers thrashed their way through the still sea. To left and right the shadowy islands loomed, darkly against the black sky, outlined by the stars. The warm damp air lifted the coolness from the water in little puffs, as the skiff slipped along. Now and then, in the gloom, a boat showed dimly alongside, and the laughing voices of girls and boys told how near it passed, a mere floating dimness upon blackness. The stroke of light sculls swished and tinkled with the laughter. The soft mysterious charm of the summer dark was breathed upon land and water—the distant lights were love-dreaming eyes, and each time, as the oars dipped, swept and rose, the gentle sound was like a stolen kiss.
Then, suddenly, with a wild screaming rush, a rocket shot up into the night, splitting the sky with a scar of fire. The burning point of it lingered a moment overhead, then cracked into little stars that shed a soft glow through the gloom, and fell in a swift shower of sparks. Then all was hushed again, and the red and green lights moved quickly over the water, hither and thither.
Close to the shore of the island the skiff ran round the point into the shallow water along the beach, and all at once in the distance the festooned lanterns of the Canoe Club came into view, so bright that one could distinguish the branches of the spruces in the red and yellow glare, and the moving crowd of people on the little landing-stage and below, before the clubhouse. And some two hundred yards out the lights began again, gleaming from hundreds of boats and little vessels of all rigs and builds. Between these seaward lights and those on land a deep black void stretched away up Frenchman's Bay.