A dozen laughing nymphs they were, landing in madcap mood at the heart of the frolic of the wild life on the bar.
Behind them, in charge of their ruddy old skiff and the tossed canoe, came their friend and body-guard of former camping seasons, Captain Andrew Davis, master mariner of Gloucester, whose massive figure was still a tower of strength, and the light of his eye undimmed, at seventy-two!
CHAPTER VII
MENOKIJÁBO
“Oh! you needn’t ‘throw the Babel switch,’ meaning you needn’t all talk together. Now! what I’d like to know is what I’ve been doing while you’ve been growing away up there?”
Thus he faced the brine-dripping, eager girls, ruddy from immersion, who clustered round him upon the white oasis of the sand-bar.
“What you’ve been doing! Sleeping--probably!”
“Sleeping! Well! Well! If that isn’t enough to make a flat fish sit up and take notice! No, I’ve been doing my wartime bit, ‘skippering’ a coaster carrying lumber to the shipyards, dodging submarines that have been sinking so many good little vessels of the Gloucester fishing fleet. After the rheumatism hung on to this lame leg o’ mine, like a puppy-dog to a root, why, I had to stay ashore. Since then, at times, I’ve been helping out at the Coast Guard Station, over there on Prawn Island; I still can mend a breeches buoy or pull an oar, and some of their men have been drafted into other war-time service. Have you visited the station yet?”
Captain Andy pointed to a white building standing sentry over the extreme point of the island into which the long sand-bar merged.
“Yes, we have! We’ve seen all the wonderful life-saving apparatus: the light steel life-boat, the big self-bailing Coast Guard boat, too, with a water-tight tank under her planking, and six little holes--wells--down through her, with valves that act like the damper in a stove, through which the water empties itself out, if she ships any. The men said she’d live in any kind of weather.” It was a simultaneous answer from two or three of the excited girls--wet as feathered sea-mice, dripping brine and information together.