Pirates’ treasure was confidently believed to be buried there; each lad who made the trip by steam launch, motor-boat, or plodding rowboat downstream for several miles to the dunes, was certain that if he could only hit upon the right sand-hill and dig deep enough, he would find its whiteness richly inlaid with gold.
Other wild tales centred about the romantic dunes, of smugglers and their lawless doings in earlier and less law-enforcing times than the beginning of the twentieth century.
It was even hinted that within recent years there had been unlawful importations at rare intervals of certain dutiable commodities, such as intoxicating liquors and cigars, by means of a rowboat that would lie up during the day in the sandy pocket of some little creek that intersected the marshes near the white dunes, stealing forth at night into the bay to meet a mysterious vessel.
The latest report connected the name of Dave Baldwin, the vaurien, as Toiney contemptuously called him, with this species of petty smuggling.
Wiseacres, such as Captain Andy and the doctor, were of opinion that no such lawless work could be carried on to-day under the Argus eyes of revenue officers. But it was known that Dave spent most of his vagrant days hanging round the milky dunes and their neighborhood, sleeping on winter nights in some empty camp or deserted summer cottage, and occasionally varying the pale monotony of the dunes by sojourning in the woods at the opposite side of the river.
The possibility of running across him during a visit to the Sugarloaf Sand-Hills, or of seeing his “pocketed” boat reposing in some little creek where the mottled mother-seal secreted her solitary young one, had little interest for the boy scouts.
Toiney’s contempt for the skulking vagrant who had caused his mother’s heart to “break in pieces,” had communicated itself to them. They were much more interested in the prospect of pursuing acquaintance with the spotted harbor seal, once the floundering despot of the tidal river, now scarcer and more shy.
As winter merged into spring a third patrol of boy scouts was formed, composed of boys from farms down the river, who had recourse to this harbor mammal for a name and called themselves the Seals.
Thus when April swelled the buds upon the trees, and the salt-marshes were all feathery with new green, there were three patrols of boy scouts who met in the little town hall of Exmouth, forming a complete scout troop, to plan for hikes and summer camps; and to go on their cheery way out of meeting, ofttimes creating spring in the heart of winter by doing the regulation good turn for somebody.
In especial, good turns toward the sorrow-bowed old woman, Ma’am Baldwin, were in vogue that season, because a first-rate recipe for sympathy is to perform a service for its object. The greater and more risky the service, the broader the stream of good will that flows from it!