“I did,” said Captain Jeb, nodding. “She came down here once as a bit of a girl, dancing over the sands like a water kelpie. The old Captain didn’t care much for women folks, but he was sot on her sure. Then she come down agin as a bride, purty and shy and sweet; but the old man warn’t so pleased then,—growled he didn’t know what girls wanted to get married for, nohow. So you’re her boy!” The old man’s eyes softened as they rested on Freddy. “You’ve got a sort of look of her, though you ain’t as pretty,—not nigh.”
Meanwhile the “Sary Ann,” her tawny sail swelling in the wind, had left the gay beach and bathers and boat club of Beach Cliff, and was making the swell of the waves like a sea bird on the wing.
“Easy now, lass!” cautioned Captain Jeb, as they neared a white line of breakers, and he stood up firm and strong at the helm. “Steady, all of you younkers; for we’re crossing the bar. Many a good ship has left her bones on this same reef. Easy, ‘Sary Ann’! It’s no place for fooling round here.”
And, as if to emphasize his words, the black shadows of a wrecked ship rose gaunt and grim before them.
“Struck the reef two months ago,” explained the Captain, with eye and hand still steady on his helm. “Can’t get her off. Captain fool enough to try Beach Cliff Harbor without a native pilot! Why, thar ain’t no books nor charts can tell you nothing ’bout navigating round these here islands: you have to larn it yourself. It’s the deceivingest stretch along the whole Atlantic coast. Thar’s times when this here bar, that is biling deep with water now, is bare enough for one of you chaps to walk across without wetting your knees. Easy now, ‘Sary Ann’! Ketch hold of that rope, younker, and steady the sail a bit. So thar, we’re over the shoals. Now clip it, my lass” (and the old man swung the sail free),—“clip it fast as you like for Killykinick.”
And, almost as if she could hear the “Sary Ann” leaped forward with the bulging sail, and was off at the word; while Captain Jeb, the harbor reef safely passed, leaned back in his boat and pointed out to his young passengers (for even the elegant Dud was roused into eager curiosity) the various things of interest on their way: the light ship, the lighthouses, the fishing fleet stretching dim and hazy on the far horizon, the great ocean liner only a faint shadow trailing a cloud of smoke in the blue distance.
“Them big fellows give us the go by now, though time was when they used to come from far and near; all kinds—Spanish, Portugee, East Indian. Them was the whaling days, when Beach Cliff was one of the greatest places on the coast. She stands out so far she hed the first bite at things. All the sailing ships made for snug harbor here. But, betwixt the steamboats and the railroads gobbling up everything, and the earth itself taking to spouting oil, things are pretty dead and gone here now.”
“But lots of fine folks come in the summer time,” said Dud.
“And there’s a church!” exclaimed Brother Bart, who had caught a passing glimpse of a cross-crowned spire. “Thank God we’ll not be beyond the light and truth entirely! You’re to take us to Mass every Sunday, my good man; and we are to give you a dollar for the trouble of it, to say nothing of the blessing upon your own soul. Were you ever at Mass?”
“Never,” answered Captain Jeb.