THREE DAYS AT SEA
The three days out at sea passed all too quickly. The weather kept clear
and cool up the coast, and the nights were perfect. In spite of
Crullers’ unwillingness to rise early, the other girls were on deck at
sunrise the first morning, and were rewarded by an invitation to the
bridge with the Captain and Senator Yates. Polly made friends with the
Captain at once.
“His name is Captain Sandy Saunders,” she told the girls. “And he sailed
first of all from the Hebrides, he told me, when he was a bit of a
laddie.”
As Kate had remarked teasingly, Polly had a terrible weakness towards
panhandle names, just the same as Aunty Welcome, and this was really a
very interesting Captain.
“He looks quite a good deal like a moon fish,” said Ruth, thoughtfully,
the first time she had seen him. “They are found in West Indian waters,
girls, and look just like decapitated pirates, round, and pink-faced,
with little round mouths and round eyes, and a tuft of fin like hair on
top.”
“I don’t think that is one bit complimentary, Ruth,” Polly had declared,
indignantly. “My captain doesn’t look like a decapitated pirate.”
And yet the next time she glanced up at the pilot house, and saw the
captain standing beside the wheelsman, she had to smile. He wore a blue
coat, with brass buttons, tight to his neck, and a high white collar,
and white duck trousers, with a stripe up the sides. And his face was
round, and smooth shaven, and very sunburned, with round eyes, so blue
that they seemed like glass marbles. But before that first day was over,
Polly and he were firm friends and shipmates.
The Admiral did not rise until six o’clock. As he had remarked the night
before, he had watched the sun rise from nearly every body of salt water
on the globe, and now he was convinced that it could get up without his
help, and he needed his beauty sleep badly.
To the girls, it was a wonderful sight, that first sunrise. The clouds
turned to flakes of radiant gold and rose and violet, shot through and
through with silver lights. When the sun rose over the horizon line,
every wavelet caught its glory in miniature, and the whole wide sea
looked like “gloryland,” as Aunty Welcome said. Isabel leaned over the
rail at the stern, looking out at the widening wake of pearly foam, that
glittered and sparkled like countless diamonds in the sunshine.
“I wonder whether that isn’t what makes the pink tint inside sea
shells,” she said musingly to Kate. “Maybe they caught some of the color
and imprisoned it.”
Polly came hurrying along deck, her cheeks aglow, her cap on the back of
her head, and hands deep in her reefer pockets, for the early mornings
were cool.
“Girls, there’s a school of porpoises moving off shore,” she called,
excitedly. “You can see them around the prow plainly.”
They hurried after her, and reached the extreme point of the prow,
beyond the neat coils of rope and the capstan.
Polly laughed over the latter.
“I used to call that the captain,” she said. “There was a song
grandfather sang to me, something about ‘We’ll heave the capstan round,
my boys,’ and I always said, ‘We’ll heave the captain round, my boys.’ I
remember he told me such things never happened on well-regulated ships.”
“Well, forevermore, girls,” exclaimed Sue, as she leaned over the prow,
until she could have reached down and touched the gilded crest of the
_Hippocampus_ itself. “There are a lot down there, and they’re going as
fast as we are!”
It was strange to watch them. There seemed to be a dozen or more, about
three or four feet long, and as they played and frolicked in the leaping
spray from the cutwater, they would roll and toss and turn half over
like kittens. Underneath, their bodies were a deep shell-pink, and the
rest was brownish-green.
While they were watching them, Marbury came along deck holding something
in his hand.
“One of the sailors found it back there on the aft deck while he was
swabbing it just now,” he called. “It’s a flying fish.”
The girls examined it with eager interest, pulling out the delicate,
bat-like wings that folded close to its sides, just like a junk boat’s
sails, as Polly said. Then they had the fun of letting it go over the
side of the boat, and it sank out of sight.
“But it’s half dead now,” said Marbury. “There’s not much use in putting
it back.”
“Yes, there is,” answered Polly, cheerfully. “It will have the fun of
telling all the other fish its wonderful adventure, and will die happy.
I can see a ridge of land way off there to the west, can’t you?”
“Barnegat, and the Jersey coast, I think,” Marbury told her. “There’s
bully yachting all along there, on account of the inlets. I camped out
near Cape May one summer with a crowd of boys from the naval ‘Prep.,’
and we had fine fishing and sailing. The beaches are long and shallow.
Up in Maine you’ll find them short with plenty of rocks.”
“Short around where the rocks are, you mean,” said Ruth. “There are
long, flat reaches of sand up there, too.”
“Anyway, we like rocks,” put in Polly, comfortably. “I don’t think a
long, shallow beach is good for yachting. Where are you at low tide? Up
in the sand somewhere. And where are you at high tide? Swamped.”
Marbury laughed at her, heartily. He was a tall, stalwart naval cadet of
nineteen, with the Senator’s own merry eyes and quick gift of
understanding.
“That makes me think of one of father’s stories,” he said. “Uncle Joe,
an old darkey down home, used to say he’d a heap rather be killed on
land than on water, ‘’case if dey’s an accident on land, why, dar you
is, and if dey’s a blow-up in de middle ob de ocean, whar is you?’”
“I don’t care,” persisted Polly, even while she laughed at the story
with the others. “Most people are afraid of rocks when they’re boating,
but rocks won’t hurt you if you know how to manage them. I’d rather have
rocks along shore with some water around them, deep enough to let a
three-foot draft boat slip in, than half a mile of wet sand to climb
over after you’ve anchored.”
“You won’t get any three-foot draft on a catboat unless your
centerboard’s down,” Ted said. “I know because I’ve heard my brothers
tell about theirs. It hasn’t any more keel than a washbowl. I like a
‘cat’ myself, because you jam her down against the wind, and lie back
and rest. In a yawl or knockabout, you have to change around, and shift
about, and fuss every time you tack. I don’t think that’s any fun.”
Polly’s brown eyes sparkled, and she stuck her hands deep in her reefer
pockets, and looked out at the wide ocean as if she wanted to clasp
hands with it.
“I do,” she said. “I’d like to have a boat that was nearly all sail, and
just me sitting on a plank. I love to feel the wind in my face, and
reach out to it. A catboat’s a regular tub.”
“No, it isn’t, Polly, truly,” Ted protested. “There’s a picture in my
Tennyson of the passing of Arthur, and the three queens came after him
in a catboat. You can tell it is just a catboat by looking at it.”
Everyone laughed, but Ted stood her ground sturdily.
“Not a catboat, goose,” explained Ruth, merrily. “It must have been a
‘shallop flitting, silken sailed, skimming down to Camelot.’”
“There,” cried Sue. “I’ve been wanting a boat all along, that would be
different from those the other girls sail, and now I have it. My boat
shall be the only unique one in the yacht club. I shall get me a
shallop.”
They trooped in to breakfast with rosy cheeks and laughing lips. Mrs.
Yates was awaiting them. The Admiral and she were talking over old
Virginia days, and the girls were glad to listen to some of those tales
of long ago, while they partook of deliciously-fried scallops, crisp
bacon on toast triangles, corn fritters, and fried sweet potatoes,
served as only the Senator’s plantation cook could serve them.
After breakfast, Ruth said that Kate and she were going into the cabin
to study Mrs. Yates’s sea library and collections.
“We’ll all go,” proclaimed Polly at once. “It will never do to let these
two know so much more than the rest of us.”
So all the forenoon they pored over the pressed seaweed folios,
excepting the hour for morning service, when the Senator called all
hands into the cabin and read the dear, familiar words they all loved.
After dinner they went back to the collections and the library, and this
time Mrs. Yates herself joined them, and explained many things they did
not know about. Besides the seaweed folios, there were glass cases
hanging against the walls, containing shells and all manner of sea
curiosities. Ruth was in her element. With her eyeglasses clipped firmly
in place on her nose, she traced the pedigree of the rarest specimens,
and told the other girls all about sea urchins, Japanese trumpet shells,
chambered nautili, and jellyfish, that Mrs. Yates called the
phosphorescent mushrooms of the sea.
“Just wait till we reach our island,” Ruth told the rest. “Every morning
early I shall hunt along the beach and in the enchanted gardens the tide
leaves in the rock hollows, and I shall get results.”
“What sort of shells are those, Ruth?” asked Crullers, in her slow
sleepy way. “I don’t remember hearing about them.”
“Results, Crullers, results,” repeated Ruth, patiently, but forcibly.
“The effects of a cause. The shells and things left by the tide. Then
after we have classified, and studied them, we’ll arrange them for
preservation. Which tint would the sea weed look best against, Polly? I
brought brown cards and gray and green, for mounting.”
“Brown,” Polly told her, “biscuit brown. Don’t you know what beautiful
colors the seaweed dries to, purples, and lavenders, and deep maroons,
and woodsy browns. Save your green boards for ferns, and shore flowers,
and your gray ones for the mosses and lichens.”
“And, by the way, Polly,” added Mrs. Yates, “here is a hint that may
prove useful. Don’t use any glue or mucilage to fasten your seaweed or
other vegetation to the boards. Marbury has some fine wire brads that
answer the purpose admirably. They are sharp and flexible, and nearly
invisible after they are fastened to the boards, and your specimens are
held securely in place.”
“That’s a splendid idea, Mrs. Yates,” cried Kate and Polly in one
breath. “We wondered how we could fasten them.”
“What is the best way to preserve shells, Mrs. Yates?” asked Ruth,
eagerly, leaning her chin on her two palms, and bending forward.
“Well, that depends on the size. Your large ones must be packed
separately—”
“But we shan’t find very large ones along our coast, shall we?”
“Indeed, you will, especially along the Maine shore. Even the large
periwinkles, that are pink and brown mottled, are too large to put in
bottles. You will find as I did, that the easiest and simplest way to
dispose of shells is to make things out of them during the summer. It
passes the time, and is very enjoyable. Have you seen the portìere that
hangs between my stateroom and Marbury’s? It is made entirely of shells,
strung on silken cords. Marbury collected the shells and I made it one
summer when we took a cottage near Greenwich, Conn. There is a dearth of
dainty shells along the Long Island Sound shore, but these are very
pretty, and are so soft that you can pierce them easily with a needle. I
don’t remember their name, but Marbury used to call them in fun,
Neptune’s finger-nails.”
The girls wanted to see the portìere at once, and they followed Mrs.
Yates along the cabin to her own special quarters, a cool, commodious
stateroom that was her very own, as Polly said. Next to it on one side
slept Marbury, and on the other was the Senator’s apartment. The
portìere of shells was exquisite, the girls agreed. The shells were
hardly larger than finger-nails, in fact, and as delicate, and
translucent as sea foam. Some were palest pink, and others clear amber,
and still others were a faint pearl, or vivid green.
“It makes me think of those funny wind harps that the Chinese use to
scare away evil spirits,” said Kate. “Listen how the shells tinkle when
the wind sways them to and fro. I’d love to carry one back to Miss
Calvert, girls, as our summer gift.”
“We’ll do it,” said Polly at once, “if there are any of these shells at
Lost Island. Mrs. Yates, what is this stretched over your walls,
please?”
“Just everyday fish net,” answered Mrs. Yates, smiling as Polly and the
rest examined the tightly stretched, dark green net that covered the
stateroom walls, taut and snug. “It was Marbury’s idea. He told me the
boys at the naval academy used it on their walls when they camped out,
to hang specimens on, or any odds and ends. I wanted something that
would not deface the woodwork, and Marbury put it up for me. It is very
handy to slip pictures in, or ornaments of any kind.”
“It would make good window curtains too,” said Kate. “Perhaps we may be
able to get some from the fishermen, Polly. It would come in handy
somewhere, and if we didn’t do anything else with it we might even use
it to catch fish in.”
The next day Marbury showed them his lines and fishing tackle, and gave
them general hints on the gentle art of landing cod and mackerel and
other fish.
“And what about lobsters?” asked Crullers. “I like lobster all cooked up
in cream the way Polly makes it in the chafing dish. How can we catch
them?”
“Here you are, Crullers,” called Ruth, from the other end of the cabin.
“You sit down here, and read all about it. I have just finished, and I
feel as though I could set any lobster pot along the coast, now.”
That evening was the last they were to spend on the yacht. It was Monday
night, and the captain promised that if all went well they should waken
in harbor the following morning. So after dinner they gathered in the
cabin, and Mrs. Yates played for them on the piano, while out in the
moonlight the Admiral paced the deck with the Senator, and put his head
inside the door every now and then to suggest some favorite.
“Isn’t it queer, Polly?” Isabel said softly, as she watched them, the
Senator in his white flannels and Mrs. Yates all in white too, with her
soft, fair hair worn in a single coronet braid about her head. “Isn’t it
queer that the nicest people are always the simplest in their ways, and
the most unaffected. It’s only the others—”
“The nobodies,” assented Polly, quickly, nodding her head. “I know just
what you mean. They act as if they had swallowed a pound of starch.
Grandfather told me that Mrs. Yates was the only daughter of the old
Arnold family, in Washington. He said he remembered walking one day
along the street, and meeting three colored nurses in a solemn
procession. There was one to carry a parasol over the oldest one, and
another to carry the baby’s wraps, and finally the baby herself in the
arms of the chief mammy. Just think of it. And that was Mrs. Yates when
she was Peggie Arnold.”
“Mrs. Yates,” came the Admiral’s round tones from the doorway, “do you
happen to know ‘Billy was a Bo’sun’?”
In answer Mrs. Yates’s fingers ran off a little prelude, and she sang,
while all the girls clustered around the piano to listen to the brand
new song:
“Oh, Billy was a bo’sun, bold and brave,
William was a gay young sailor,
Sailed upon the south sea wave.
Oh, William was a gay young tar.
His ship was called the “Mary Ann,”
William was a sailor,
And down the African coast she ran,
For gold and i-vor-ee!
For gold and i-vor-ee!
Oh, Billy was a bo’sun, bold and brave,
William was a gay young sailor,
Sailed upon the south sea wave,
William, he was a gay young tar.”
“That’s the one,” applauded the Admiral, gaily. “I sang that chanty
before now in a fo’cas’le on a trading ship bound for the Straits, when
I wasn’t much older than Polly there.”
“Mother knows all the sailor songs and fisherman croons of the seven
seas,” said Marbury, as he leaned towards his mother, turning pages when
she needed help. “I’ve kept count to-night, and in the last half hour
she has skipped from an Iceland lullaby to a Greek rowing chorus we boys
used to sing when we were at shell practice on the bay. Then that
rippling one was a gondolier song we heard at Venice, way out on one of
the small canals around the islands. And just before this last, Mother,
wasn’t that the little lullaby you heard at Iona?”
“This?” Mrs. Yates ran over the simple, soft melody, and Polly caught
the words.
“Day has barred her windows close, and gaes wi’ quiet feet,
Night wrapped in a cloak of gray, comes saftly doon the street,
Mither’s heart’s a guiding star, tender, strong, and true,
Lullaby, and lulla-loo-oo—
Sleep, lammie, noo, sleep, lammie, noo.”
“Oh, that’s a darling,” cried Polly. “Please, please, sing some more.”
“We’re going out on deck, now,” said Mrs. Yates, rising, with one arm
around Polly. “The moon is rising, and I want to hear the Polly Page
Glee Club this last night we will be together.”
“If a mere banjo player may join in too,” suggested Marbury, his eyes
twinkling with fun, “we’ll show the sharks and mermaids what real talent
can do.”
The girls often looked back on that evening. It seemed almost too happy
and perfect to be quite real, Polly said. The night was wonderfully calm
and clear, a night when all the stars looked nearer than usual, Sue
declared.
Even the Admiral’s rolling basso was frequently heard, and the Senator
hummed contentedly, when they happened to strike a special favorite of
his. All the old college songs and heart-throb tunes that are handed
down over cradles of nations were touched up by the glee club that
night, and last of all, Polly’s clear soprano started up the Admiral’s
favorite, “Tom Bowling.”
“Just leave that one to the echoes,” he said, as the sweetly-plaintive
old melody died away on the still night air. “And now, to your bunks,
every girl Jack of you, for you’ll wake up to-morrow with Maine under
your noses, and Lost Island to shake hands with before breakfast.”