When they were safely bestowed among the lobster-pots with which the boat was laden, the man leaned on his oars and eyed [page 21] them critically. "Short of sense, ain't ye?" he remarked genially. "Nigh about drownded that time or I 'm no skipper! If ye ain't bent on destruction ye 'd better get into dry clothes. Ye 're as wet as a mess of drownded kittens. Tell me where you live and I 'll take you home."
He flung a tarpaulin over the shivering figures and tucked it around them as he scolded. "'T is all my fault," sobbed poor Nancy. "Dan came in just to get me out."
"Very commendable of him, I 'm sure," said the stranger, nodding approvingly at Dan, "and just what he 'd ought to do, and doubtless you 're worth saving at that, though a hen-headeder young miss I never see in all my days!"
"She went to find seaweed to bed the clams," explained Dan, coming to his sister's defense, "and the tide caught her. Thou art kind indeed to pick us up, sir."
"Oh," groaned remorseful Nancy, her teeth chattering, "it 's all because I 'm such a sinner! I made a likeness of Gran'ther [page 22] Wattles in the sand and said dreadful things about the prophet Elijah, or mayhap 't was Elisha, and Dan said a bear might come to eat me up just like the forty and two children, and instead of a bear we both were almost swallowed by the tide!"
"Well, now," said the stranger, comfortingly, "ye see instead of sending bears the Lord sent me along to fish ye out, just the same as He sent the whale to swallow Jonah when he was acting contrary! Looks like He meant to let ye off with a scare this time. Come now, my lass, there 's salt water enough aboard and if ye cry into the boat, ye 'll have to bail her out. Besides," he added whimsically, looking up at the sky, "there 's another squall coming on, and two at a time is too many for any sailor. If I 'm to cast you up on the shore same as the whale, ye 'll have to tell me which way to go, and who ye are."
"Our father is Josiah Pepperell," answered Dan, "and our house is almost a mile back from shore near Cambridge."
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"So you 're Josiah Pepperell's children! To be sure, to be sure! Might have known it. Ye do favor him some," said the fisherman. "Well! well! The ways of the Lord are surely past finding out! Why, I knew your father way back in England. He came over here for religion and I came for fish. Not that I ain't a God-fearing man," he added hastily, noticing a look of horror on Nancy's face, "but I ain't so pious as some. I 'm a seafaring man, Captain Sanders of the Lucy Ann, Marblehead. Ye can see her riding at anchor out there in the bay. I have n't set eyes on your father since he left Boston and settled in the back woods up yonder."