“But—but how long did it take? Why didn’t they stop it?”
“You can’t stop that sand when it starts going. I don’t know how long it took; probably two or three years, though. One day when I was over there with my father he took a piece of wood we found on the beach and laid it on the sand back there and watched. In twenty minutes it was covered up and when we came back a couple of hours later there was a regular mound there. That’s the way those dunes start. A bunch of grass or something gets in the way and the sand blows into and makes a little lump as big as your two hands, perhaps. Then the sand blows and blows—it’s always moving, even on still days—and more of it lodges there, and more and more, and finally there’s a hill as big as those you see. They’re always changing, too. The sand blows from one to another, and sometimes in the Fall or the Winter a big tide sweeps over the beach and eats into them. You get a dandy view from that biggest one. Ever been up there, Hal?”
“No, I guess not. I haven’t been over to the Dunes for years. It would be fun to go some time, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d love to,” agreed Bee. “And we might take shovels and dig out that house!”
“Yes, that would be a nice way to spend a month or two,” replied Hal sarcastically. “Any time you want to amuse yourself that way, Bee, I’ll furnish the shovel.”
“Is that Nobody’s Island there ahead?” asked Bee.
“No, that’s Toller’s Rock,” Jack explained. “The island is beyond it, around the corner. That black reef dead ahead is The Clinker. We’ll keep outside it today, although when the tide is full you can get in between it and the shore.”
The dunes gave place to low grassy hills and Toller’s Rock sprang from the latter, a great mass of weather-beaten granite, and jutted boldly into the sea. Once around The Clinker their destination was in plain sight. The shore receded for several hundred yards to the mouth of a little river which wound its way inland through miles of salt marsh. Beyond the river’s mouth a rounded hill arose from the marsh level. It was well grassed on the landward side and a considerable grove of small trees clothed the summit which was perhaps forty or fifty feet above the beach. Here and there a ledge cropped out, suggesting that at one time Nobody’s Island had been just what Toller’s Rock was now, a bare mass of granite. But why Nature had clothed the one rock and left the other bare was not evident. Bee looked somewhat disappointed as he gazed at it.