"Shall we leave our dolls here?" asked Vi.
"Yes. There's nobody here now and we can go faster if we don't carry them," answered Rose. "Here, Mun Bun and Margy, leave your dolls with Vi's and mine. They'll be all right."
Rose laid her doll down on the sand and the others did the same, so that there were four Japanese dolls in a row.
"Won't the waves come up and get 'em?" asked Margy as she looked back on the dolls.
"No, the waves don't come up as high as the place where we left them," said Rose, who had taken care to put the dolls to "sleep" well above what is called "high-water mark," that is, the highest place on the beach where the tide ever comes.
"Come on! Hurry if you want to see the men from the upset boat!" George called back to Rose and the others.
"Let's wait for 'em," proposed Laddie. "Maybe they'll be lonesome. I'm going to wait."
"Well, we'll all wait," said George, who was a kind-hearted boy. "If you can't see the men swim out you can see the lot of fish that went overboard."
As the children came out from behind the little hills of sand they saw, down on the beach, a crowd of men and boys. And out in the surf and the waves, which were high and rough, was a large white boat, turned bottom up, and about it were men swimming.
"Oh, will they drown?" asked Russ, much excited.