"Boat'll be easiest. Sand's heavy walking. How long can we count on this weather?"
"Oh, for a week at least. It's our best time of year."
"You will take us home?" asked Avice eagerly, when they had climbed into the boat and were swinging along parallel to the shore, the children staring in a vast silence and with rounded eyes at the bearded sailor-men and their amazing ways.
"As far as our service permits, madame, we will do anything and everything you wish. We return to Halifax in Nova Scotia, but once there you will have no difficulties."
"That is where we want to go," said Wulfrey.... "Better keep out a bit here. There are ridges below there.... Now if you will turn in."
"What's that? A ship?" asked the tall man, and all eyes shot round to the bare poles of the 'Jane and Mary' snowing over the sandhills.
"A schooner, land-locked in a lagoon. That was our first home. Now we live ashore."
"And you've been all alone all that time?"
"We had one companion, the mate of the ship.... He died four years ago. Since then none have come but the dead.... We can get in here, I think."
The boat ran softly up the beach again, the sailors carried out Avice and the children, and they all struck up through the sandhills to the house.