Giving way before the red settler, he bumped against her flat bottom, and hoisted her right out of the water--her delicate cygnet chick, the birch canoe, too!
An easy matter for him, for he weighed a full three hundred pounds or so, and made nothing of the leviathan feat of hoisting a cargo of girls tumultuously out of one element into another--the spray-shot, spray-curdled air!
The old wooden settler clucked and rocked dizzily, fiery red in the face and mad as an old wet hen. But she could not hold on to her chicks--or at least she could hold to but very few of them!
Out of her they shot on all sides! The green tide around her suddenly bloomed with flower-like girlish heads done up in red silk handkerchiefs.
The air was streaked with a curdled foam of sputtering cries: “The seal! That big seal! Where--is--he? Dove r-right un-der--us! Played submarine, he did!... Tchu! tchu! tchu! C’est la Guerre! Guerre, with a vengeance--yes!... Oh! Where do we go from here, girls--where do we go-o from here?”
“You deserve to go to ‘Davy Jones’ from here, for letting a big seal bounce you out! Great Neptune! haven’t you a grain more sense than that, after all the forty-one tricks I’ve taught you? Eh-h?”
It was a loud voice, whooping like a klaxon, that came suddenly ringing over the swirling tide, seconded by a sound of oars. “D’you ask where the seal is? Well! there he goes, swimming off--beating it to win’ard, vowing by his ancestors, back to the tadpoles, that he’ll never have anything to do with girls again--after landing you all in the surf off the old bar. An’ each an’ every one o’ you as wet as a sea-mouse--a feathered sea-mouse! Dear, dear! ’Bout time you had a convoy, I reckon!”
“‘Convoy’! Captain Andy! Captain Andy Davis! Well! it’s no wonder a big seal b-bounced us all out--got the better of us; you’ve been neglecting us s-shamefully.” It was Blue Heron’s voice babbling through brine as Olive’s geranium-like head rose from the greenery of a water-hill.
“Panky doodle! Have I, indeed? Want me to tow your old red settler of a boat on to the sands? She’s drifting off. The rest of you can swim, I reckon. Good! In the water, anyhow, you behave as well as you look--an’ that’s saying a lot!”
“Hurrah! Is it now? So--so you’re thinking better of sending us to--Davy Jones--right off, eh?” Sesooā’s little flame of laughter shot back over her shoulder, as, striking out boldly, she swam for the dry sands of the long bar--the dazzling Great White Way of birds--her companions following, Olive towing the foreign-born little sister, who was hampered by having drawn the rough pea-green sweater, for warmth, over her bathing-suit.