"Are all the Ocean House boarders weak-minded?" I inquired, seeking information.
Captain Bailey bounced on his overturned mackerel-keg like a fat, tan-colored rubber ball.
"My land!" he snapped. "Would they board at the Ocean House if they wan't weak-minded? This feller wan't an Ocean Houser, though. He was young Stumpton's automobile skipper-shover, or shofer, or somethin' they called him. He answered to the hail of Billings, and his home port was the Stumptons' ranch, way out in Montana. He'd been here in Orham only a couple of weeks, havin' come plumb across the United States to fetch his boss the new automobile. You see, 'twas early October. The Stumptons had left their summer place on the Cliff Road, and was on their way south for the winter. Young Stumpton was up to Boston, but he was comin' back in a couple of days, and then him and the shover was goin' automobilin' to Florida. To Florida, mind you! In that thing! If it was me I'd buy my ticket to Tophet direct and save time and money.
"Well, anyhow, this critter Billings he ain't never smelt salt water afore, and he don't like the smell. He makes proclamations that Orham is nothin' but sand, slush, and soft drinks. He won't sail, he can't swim, he won't fish: but he's hankerin' to shoot somethin', havin' been brought up in a place where if you don't shoot some of the neighbors every day or so folks think you're stuck up and dissociable. Then somebody tells him it's the duckin' season down to Setuckit P'int, and he says he'll spend his day off, while the boss is away, massycreein' the coots there. This same somebody whispers that I know so much about ducks that I quack when I talk, and he comes cruisin' over in the buzz-cart to hire me for guide. And—would you b'lieve it?—it turns out that he's cal'latin' to make his duckin' v'yage in that very cart. I was for makin' the trip in a boat, like a sensible man, but he wouldn't hear of it.
"'Land of love!' says I. 'Go to Setuckit in a automobile?'
"'Why not?' he says. 'The biscuit-shooter up at the hotel tells me there's a smart chance of folks goes there a-horse-back. And where a hoss can travel I reckon the old gal here'—slappin' the thwart of the auto alongside of him—'can go too!'
"'But there's the Cut-through,' says I.
"'Tain't nothin' but a creek when the freshet's over, they tell me,' says he. 'And me and the boss have forded four foot of river in this very machine.'
"By the 'freshet' bein' over I judged he meant the tide bein' out. And the Cut-through ain't but a little trickle then, though it's a quarter-mile wide and deep enough to float a schooner at high-water. It's the strip of channel that makes Setuckit Beach an island, you know. The gov'ment has had engineers down dredgin' of it out, and pretty soon fish-boats'll be able to save the twenty-mile sail around the P'int and into Orham Harbor at all hours.