Polly tossed it back into the next upcurling wave, and they all made up some poetry on the spot, and chanted joyously.
“Oh, I am a family crab, so treat me quite tenderly.
There are generations down below, and they’re all awaiting for me.
I’ve sisters and cousins and aunts, and some great-grand-children too.
So I beg you not to cook me into crab a la Newburg stew.”
Suddenly a hail came from the main shore, and they were silent. It was past sunset, and a soft twilight afterglow was settling over the world. Coming along the ridge of sand from the Point was a lone figure, and from where they stood it looked immensely tall, outlined against the clear orange of the southern sky. Even while they hesitated, wondering who it could be, Nancy’s clear voice called far down the shore,
“Ahoy, dad, ahoy!”
“It’s the Captain,” said Polly, starting to put on her stockings instantly. “Hurry, and catch up with him. Nancy says she goes to meet him every night.”
They slipped on shoes and stockings quickly, and ran back to the house just in time to see Nancy and the Captain crossing the hummocks. Polly never forgot that first look she had of Captain Ben Carey of the Sickle Point Life Saving Station. Tom was a pretty good reproduction of him, but there was something in the Captain’s expression that Tom lacked, a curious look in his deep blue eyes, as though they had always gazed out over wide distances. He was tall and broad shouldered and mighty, the girls thought. His face was smooth-shaven, but tanned and weather-beaten and crisped into innumerable fine wrinkles, until Sue declared it made her think of a baked apple. His hair was thick and curly like Tom’s, and his closely shut lips seemed to be ever smiling out at a world that even its Maker could still pronounce good as He had at its first dawning. But it was his voice that Polly loved best. Such a rich, hearty voice it was, with a rollicking roll to it when it burst into a sailor boy “come—all—ye,” and a deep, resonant tone in speaking that simply won your heart.
“Ahoy, there, ahoy,” he shouted back, as they called to Nancy and him, and then Polly saw that he was to be their best friend all that long happy summer.