“It’s four thirty-five now,” he said. “Breakfast for all hands at five are the Senator’s orders, and ashore at six.”
“Are we to go direct to the island?” asked Polly.
“No,” the Admiral spoke up. “I have talked it over with Mrs. Yates, and she agrees with me it would be better for you girls to put up at the hotel first, until you find out how the land lies. I always had my doubts about Robinson Crusoe’s comfort, and I want you to be situated comfortably, before I leave you.”
“I thought you were going to remain up here right along, sir?” said Marbury.
“Not exactly. This yacht club opens for a couple of months, and I cannot put in all that time with the rocking chair fleet over yonder on the veranda of the hotel or boat club, can I? I shall stay around within hail, until they get their bearings, and are fairly on their course, then I am going South until the regatta in August.”
“Who is that man over yonder?” asked Sue suddenly. She had been far up in her favorite seat in the prow, as close to the Hippocampus as she could get, watching the outline of the shore shape itself clearly from the shadows. A dory was just coming in from the channel that led to the open sea, with one man in it, and a lot of lanterns for cargo.
“One of the men from the station,” Captain Saunders explained. “You can see the lighthouse out on the Point yonder, can’t you? Those buildings at its base are where the light-tender lives, and farther along shore you can see the roof of another building, with a tall spar on it. That’s the life-saving station. Every night and morning one of the men goes out to hang the signal lights on the piling that marks the channel to the inlet yonder. It’s a narrow passage, and there’s a bad ledge of rock off to the southeast. That arm of land to the south they call the Sickle.”
He pointed to the stretch of shore that extended from the mainland for several miles, and curved around Eagle Bay like a half moon.
“Why didn’t they call it the Crescent?” asked Isabel, meditatively. “It’s so much more expressive.”
“So is Sickle,” laughed Polly, waving her handkerchief towards the dory. “Maybe this one gathers in the harvest of the sea.”