All at once, just as if a curtain had been drawn, the outlines of a rough shanty appeared in front of them. It was a tumble-down sort of a place, seemingly made of driftwood and old sacks and bits of canvas. From a rusty iron stove-pipe on top, a feeble column of blue smoke was ascending.
The noise of chopping had ceased on their approach and as they stood hesitating a strange figure suddenly appeared round the corner of the wretched rookery of a place. The man, who stood facing them, a startled look in his light blue eyes, was apparently about middle age. He wore a full beard of a golden brown color and was barefooted and hatless. His clothes consisted of a tattered shirt and a pair of coarse canvas trousers.
"Well, shiver my toplights!" he cried as his eyes fell on the trio, "whar under ther sun did you come from? Drop from ther clouds?"
"That's just what we did," said the debonnaire Jimsy, as the girls drew back rather affrighted at the weird looking figure and his queer, wild way of talking.
"What's that? Don't try to fool with me young feller. I ain't as crazy as I reckon I looks."
There was a certain dignity about the man when he spoke, that, despite his ragged clothing and miserable habitation, was impressive.
"No, it's really so," Jimsy hastened to assure him, "we—we came in an aeroplane, you know."
"Well, now," said the man scratching his head, "I reckon that's the first of them contrivances to reach Lost Brig Island."
"Lost Brig Island," echoed Jess in an alarmed tone; "is this an island?"
"If the geography books still define an island as a body of land surrounded by water, it is," rejoined the man, with a smile.