"I'm so glad," continued Martine, "that you are willing to help me; and when we reach the islands I'm going to ask you to find some one who will tell me all about them."
"There can't be much to tell," replied poor Herbert; "you know they are small and rugged and very queer. I've been there many a time on a yacht and I'm perfectly sure from what I've seen that they haven't any history."
"In such matters," responded Martine solemnly, as if she were preaching a sermon, "you cannot be too positive. No corner of the world is so obscure as to be without history."
Again Herbert looked at her in amazement. Her head was turned from him and he did not see the mischievous expression lurking in her brown eyes. He liked Martine, and since there seemed to be no help for it, it would be only proper in him to promise what she asked.
"Certainly," he replied, "I dare say we can find out something for your book; they have a very intelligent clerk at the hotel, and I know a man in a cottage on Smutty Nose who's lived there a long time, and what he can't tell probably would not be worth knowing."
Thus Herbert constituted himself Martine's guide for the day, and kept beside her and Clare until the boat touched Appledore. True to his promise, when they had finished dinner, he got a row-boat and took them over to Smutty Nose, where the old Captain proved very talkative. He explained that the name of the islands did not come from their structure, but from the quantities of fish found in the waters near the "schooling" or "shoaling" of fish. He told them that the Shoals had probably been visited by Captain John Smith, and Christopher Leavitt in 1623 had written something about them.
