All of their number who wished to do so having visited the top of the tower, our party prepared to leave.
"Are you going to walk back, papa? Mayn't I go with you?" pleaded Grace.
"No, daughter, we must not try your strength too far," he said, lifting her into the carriage where Grandma Elsie and Violet were already seated. "I am going on a mile further to Sachacha Pond, ladies," he remarked; "will you drive there, or directly home?"
"There, if there is time to go and return before the bathing hour," they answered.
"Quite. I think," he replied, and the carriage moved on, he with Max and Lulu, and several of the young gentlemen of the company following on foot.
Sachacha Pond they found to be a pretty sheet of water only slightly salt, a mile long and three quarters of a mile wide, separated from the ocean by a long narrow strip of sandy beach. No stream enters it, but it is the reservoir of the rainfall from the low-lying hills sloping down to its shores.
Quidnet—a hamlet of perhaps a half dozen houses—stands on its banks.
It is to this pond people go to fish for perch; calling it fresh-water fishing; here too they "bob" for eels.
Our party had not come to fish this time, yet had an errand aside from a desire to see the spot—namely, to make arrangements for going sharking the next day.
Driving and walking on to Quidnet they soon found an old, experienced mariner who possessed a suitable boat and was well pleased to undertake the job of carrying their party out to the sharking grounds on the shoals. He would need a crew of two men, easily to be found among his neighbors, he said; he would also provide the necessary tackle. The bait would be perch, which they would catch here in the pond before setting out for the trip by sea to their destination—about a mile away.