DROPPING ANCHOR
“I told you it was just a knob of land sticking out from the shore,”
said Tom. “It’s nearly a quarter of a mile long.”
Polly lifted her head, and drew in a deep, long breath of the cool,
salty air that blew in from the southeast. She looked down at the
“Knob,” as they soon grew accustomed to calling the island. There was a
fine incurved beach for bathing, with a great, tumbled mass of rocks at
the farther end that rose higher and higher at the end pointing towards
the bay. Young willow and scrub pine grew short and thick wherever they
could get a footing in the rock crevices, and there was plenty of grass,
but it was tall and sharp pointed and tinted queer colors from the tide.
“You can walk away out yonder into the water at low tide,” said Tom.
“The beach is a fine one, better than we’ve got at Fair Havens. There
ain’t any deep holes at all. That’s a pretty good landing too. It lops
over some, but that won’t hurt anything. You’ll get used to it, and it’s
easy to moor to.”
The girls scrambled after him down the rocky path, and followed him as
he picked his way over the sand bar, stepping from one grass hummock to
the next.
“This is high and dry at low tide,” called back Tom. “Guess you’ll have
to jump some places now.”
“Some places!” repeated Sue, holding up her clean linen skirt in dismay.
“I’m hopping like a frog now, and my shoes are wet. We’ll need a balloon
or an air ship when the tide comes in.”
“Here’s the house,” came Tom’s cheery voice, beyond a sand dune, his
bare feet having carried him swiftly over the places where the girls had
to pick their way. And all at once they saw it, the place they had
dreamed of, and talked of, and hoped for, for nearly two weeks. It was
gray, and lopsided like the landing place, and as weatherworn as the
Carey’s paling fence. Some fisherman had built it years ago, and
shielded it from the northwest winds by putting it close against the
sand dune; facing south, it looked out over the Sickle. He must have had
a variable mind, that first fisherman, for he had started out with two
rooms, then added a lean-to, and yet another lean-to, and then had built
a third one that leaned fairly over on the original lean-tos. The
lean-to portion of the house then leaned all together on the sand dune,
but the front part was up on a rock foundation, and there was a
fair-sized porch across it that Mrs. Holmes had built, when the boys had
taken it for a summer camp.
But in spite of the new supports under the flooring, it had a decided
tilt to leeward, from generations of storms that had whacked it, and
battered it, and all but demolished it. A tall flag staff still reared
itself squarely in front of the steps, and at sight of it Polly ran
ahead of the others.
“What is it, Polly?” called Ruth, holding to her hat.
“I know what she’s going to do, I know,” cried Sue. “Salute the colors!”
Polly reached the flag staff, and took the “colors” from her reefer
pocket, where they had been safely tucked away, against the time
appointed. She had made that flag herself. It had been her special
contribution to the general belongings of the club, and as Polly ran it
gallantly up to the top of the pole, the girls sent up a good, round
cheer, and even Tom threw his cap high in the air.
“’Rah! ’Rah! ’Rah!” he shouted. “She’s a-flying a good one.”
“That’s a blue triangular pennant,” explained Sue. “It’s a golden sun on
a field of blue.”
“A golden sun rampant, isn’t it?” Crullers put in.
“No, dear, couchant,” Sue laughed. “Why will you talk about heraldry
when you don’t know anything about it. I’ve studied it all up.”
The sand had drifted up around the porch base in regular hillocks,
nearly to the railing.
“When we get too tired to use the steps,” Polly said, “we can just step
over the railing, and slide down.”
“I can’t find a door,” said Isabel, doubtfully, as she came around the
house from a tour of inspection, and Kate began to chant, teasingly,
“Oh, I wish my room had a floor,
I don’t care so much for a window or a door.
But I wish my room had a floor!”
“What’s that funny little cupola up on top?” called out Polly.
“That’s the lookout,” explained Tom. “Lots of houses alongshore have
them. It’s so the women folks at home can climb up there in foul
weather, and look out towards sea through glasses, to see if the ships
are coming home.”
“Oh, I like that,” Polly said. “I’ve got ever so many ships that are
coming home some day, and when I get discouraged after this I shall
build a lookout in my heart and climb up there with a spy glass and see
how the weather is out to sea, and maybe I’ll see a sail.”
“Polly, you sentimental goose,” laughed Kate, slipping one arm around
the commodore. “You never see things just as they are.”
“I see them the way they ought to be, and that’s better,” Polly smiled
back. “Where’s Tom?”
“Prying off the planks that are nailed over the doors and windows,” Sue
called, and presently they all went inside.
There were no plastered walls or ceilings. All the rooms were finished
off like the interior of a cabin, with narrow boards nailed close
together, and there was a spicy, pungent odor through the house, like
spruce woods. One thing the girls hailed with delight. Right up through
the center of the house rose a great, old-fashioned round rock chimney.
Three fireplaces opened into it, and you could stand in any one of them
and look up at the blue sky. Long shelves stretched across the tops of
the fireplaces, and there were iron cranes on each side on which to hang
pots.
“Where are the grates?” asked Isabel.
“Aren’t any grates,” responded Tom. “You just lug in an armful of
driftwood and pile it on those rocks and start her up. We piled rocks
around outside for fenders, ’cause father thought maybe the sparks would
hit the flooring some day.”
“Won’t we just pile on wood there on chilly nights, girls?” Ruth
exclaimed, kneeling down and holding out her hands, as if she could feel
the blaze even then.
“And sit around on cushions, and tell stories, and eat toasted
marshmallows, and Aunty Welcome’s hermits,” added Ted.
“Oh, poor Aunty,” cried Polly, in sudden dismay. “I never told her where
we were going, and she’ll think we’re drowned sure. Let’s hurry, now,
and be businesslike. How much furniture is here, Tom?”
“Ain’t any at all,” said Tom, cheerfully. “Just some chairs, and a
table, and some beds, and dishes.”
“Well, that’s all we’ll need,” Polly told him. “Did you think we wanted
pianos or consoles?”
“Those aren’t furniture,” said Tom. “Those are just fixin’s.”
“Where can we get fresh water?” Kate asked.
“There’s a well at our place. I’ll bring you up some twice a day, and
oftener if you need it. You can freshen the salt water for cooking.
Mother’ll show you how.”
“I think it’s splendid to have near neighbors like you,” said Polly.
“Maybe we’ll be able to do something for you before the summer’s over.”
Tom poked his bare toes into the sand sheepishly.
“Oh, that’s all right. Mother and Nancy are mighty glad you’ve come. It
gets pretty lonesome way out here on the Sickle. I don’t mind it so
much, because I’m going into the coast service with father as soon as
I’m old enough, but Nancy wishes she had some girls to talk to. There’s
plenty over in the village, but that’s too far off, and the crowd at the
Orienta or the hotel and cottages, we folks don’t see much of. My Aunt
Cynthy says she’ll take Nancy any time over in the village and bring her
up, but mother says she guesses she’ll hang on to her only girl. Nancy
likes you girls, because she says you seem different.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, you’re not all starched up the way the others are over at the
hotel.” He squinted one eye at the sun. “It’s half-past twelve, and more
too.”
Regretfully the girls took leave of their new kingdom, but as they
walked back along the bay shore road to the hotel, they turned every now
and then, and saw the little blue and gold pennant streaming valiantly
in the breeze, and as Polly remarked, it certainly did look home-like.
They did not stop at the Carey cottage going back. It was a good mile
around to the hotel, and the Admiral was waiting for them on the
veranda.
“Polly, you go up and calm Welcome,” he said, the first thing. “She’s
been down to me about sixty-nine times to ask me to send the life-savers
after you. You run up before you have your lunch and show her there are
no bones broken.”
Polly obeyed gladly enough. The old colored mammy was very dear to her,
and her arms had been the only shelter she had known when the Admiral
was away from Glenwood ever since her own mother died.
“Deed, chile, if I ain’t powerful glad to see you!” Welcome exclaimed,
as soon as she set eyes on her. “Praise de Lord, oh, mah soul! Has you
been way off in dat blazin’ sunlight and no parasol? If you ain’t de
carelessest chile I ever did see. You’ll get so freckled dere won’t
anybody know you under your bridal veil, you mind what I say, now.”
“No, I won’t, Aunty, truly. Listen. It’s just the happiest sort of a
place, and I know you’ll love it. There are big fireplaces and a wide
porch to sit out on, and you can see way out over the ocean and over the
bay too. I don’t see why we can’t go over as soon as we have finished
luncheon.”
“How do you intend totin’ me through all dat sand?” asked Aunty with
dignity.
“We’re not going to tote you at all. We’re going to roll you,” laughed
Polly, as she reached up, and took the wrinkled brown face between her
fresh young palms. “Listen, you old dear. Just you go down and have your
dinner, and then make out a list of what we need to cook with, and I’ll
send Tom over to the village after it this afternoon.”
“Is dere anything to cook _in_?” asked Aunty, still unmollified.
“One iron kettle, one spider, a baking pan, and two sauce-pans,”
enumerated Polly. “And some dishes.”
“Well, it’s a mighty good thing I packed up plenty in de boxes,” said
Aunty solemnly, and with deep gratification. “I felt it in mah bones it
was a desert isle, and I’ve done kept mah eye on dose boxes ever since
we left Ole Point Comfort behind us. I’ve watched ’em, and I’ve sat on
’em, and I just know dey’s safe.”
Polly said nothing, but she thought hard. She had forgotten all about
the two big packing-cases that contained their bedding, and general camp
outfit. The last she had seen of them, they had been stowed away on the
lower deck of the _Hippocampus_ for safekeeping.
“Don’t you fret one bit, dear,” she said at last, “I’ll ask grandfather
where they are, and if they’re not here, then they must be there. Stoney
told me when I lost my cap overboard, a thing is never lost as long as
you know where it is. Just make out that list, Aunty, for us, and we’ll
hurry up with luncheon, and coax grandfather to let us go over this
afternoon to the club-house for good.”
It didn’t require very much coaxing. Polly herself broached the subject
at the table down in the long, shady dining-room, and the Admiral told
her she might do as she pleased.
“I’m not going to interfere except when it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll
just stop here for a while till you’re on your course, then I’ll go
South again until the regatta. You manage your own fleet. I’ll be on
that veranda for a week longer, though, and if there’s any mutiny or
danger, just send a couple of rockets and I’ll come alongside.”
“Wireless, Admiral Page, wireless,” Kate corrected, in her amusing way.
“We’re strictly up-to-date, you know. Polly will have a wireless
apparatus over there sure as can be, and you’ll get many a ‘C.Q.D.’”
“Grandfather, dear,” began Polly, suddenly remembering, “where are the
two big boxes with all our things in?”
“On the way to the island this minute,” answered the Admiral. “That is
once I forestalled you, young lady. But here’s one question I cannot
solve, so I shall have to put it before the club. How are we to get
Aunty Welcome to the island?”
Polly meditated. So did the rest, but Ruth solved the problem.
“When the wagon comes back from taking the boxes over, send Aunty back
in it.”
Polly hugged her joyously.
“Whatever should we do, Grandma,” she cried, “without you to solve
things for us. Here I’ve been thinking we’d have to blindfold her the
way they do elephants to coax them on board a ship. No, thanks, I don’t
care for any shortcake,” this to the pretty waitress, as she was about
to place a goodly slice beside her plate. “I must hurry. Crullers, dear,
you may have it all.”
“Polly,” whispered Isabel, as they were leaving the long dining-room,
“those two girls at that little table, over near the veranda doors, have
been looking at us ever since we came in.”
“Maybe they like us,” Polly said, happily. She always took the cheeriest
view of everything as a matter of course. As the Admiral and his fleet
of clipper builts, as he called them, passed the table Isabel had
mentioned, Polly looked at the girls seated there, quite frankly and
interestedly. There was no doubt but what they were sisters, and Polly
liked them at first sight. The elder was about sixteen, and the younger
seemed to be about Polly’s age.
“I wonder who they are,” Isabel said, when they were up in the long,
cool, double parlors. “I like them and I wish we could get acquainted
with them before we leave. They’re very well dressed, Polly.”
Polly laughed at the serious, earnest tone.
“Isabel always judges people by their raiment,” she declared. “I know if
she met John the Baptist in camel’s hair, and Peter Pan in white
flannels like the Senator wore, she would drop Peter a gracious
courtesy, and not notice anyone else at all.”
“Oh, Polly, I would,” cried Isabel. “I am not as bad as that, but I do
believe that clothes show character, just as cleanliness or good manners
do. I have seen ever so many persons whose clothes may have cost lots of
money, but they looked like patchwork quilts. These girls didn’t. They
were dressed with taste, and their dresses were hand embroidered linen
too. I do wonder who they are. I like the way they do their hair,
braided, then tied up Dutch fashion with two big bows.”
“Do you want yours that way, you blessed old looking-glass?” Polly
crossed over to where Isabel sat, and began to arrange her long fair
braids in the same fashion. “It’s easy enough. All you do is cross them
over, so, and then tie your ribbon on, and let it flutter a little, like
a butterfly bow. You need very wide ribbon to make it look right. There,
now observe yourself, Lady Vanitas.”
Just then Crullers whispered: “Here they come.”
While Isabel was trying to balance herself on a bamboo tabourette so
that she could catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the
mantel, the other girls entered from the corridor leading to the wide
staircase, and hesitated.
“Dorothy,” called a pleasant voice from the hall. The elder girl looked
over her shoulder, caught Polly’s glance, and smiled, then they both
went on down the hall.
“Ready, mates?” asked the Admiral just then and Polly inquired who the
other two girls were.
“Commodore Vaughan’s daughters from the Orienta Club,” answered the old
Admiral. “And very mannerly children they are, too. You will meet them
later. I was talking to the Commodore just a few minutes ago.”
“Well, I’m glad we shall know them, anyway,” said Polly, as she went up
to where Aunty Welcome was waiting for them. “I wonder, girls, whether
grown people speak of us as ‘children.’ I feel half-way grown-up now. I
don’t think I’m a child.”
“Listen to her,” laughed Ruth. “And she’ll be fifteen next December.
Don’t you remember, Kate, in the ‘Mikado,’ where somebody tells the
three little maids they are not young ladies, they are only young
persons.”
“Has you been a-finding dat teehee’s nest again?” asked Aunty Welcome,
severely, as they all trouped into the room the Admiral had reserved for
them. “Ain’t you ’shamed to come along a hotel corridor giggling like
geese. And you-all from Virginny, too. Ain’t you got any State pride?”
“Oh, we will be good, Aunty,” pleaded Sue and Ted. “Don’t scold us. Just
wait till we get out on an entire island all our own.”
“I speck you’ll bring my hairs in sorrow to de grabe before you get
done,” Aunty prophesied, but her eyes twinkled, as she looked around her
at her charges.
It was past three o’clock before the caravan started. First a wagon was
sent around by the shore road, with Aunty Welcome and the luggage.
“That’s a pretty hefty load, son,” the Admiral told the sunburned
youngster who had agreed to do the hauling down to the Knob, as all the
shore people called Lost Island. He laughed, and slapped the reins on
the horses’ backs.
“Guess the colts will get there all right, sir,” he said. “They can both
of them swim.”
“We’ll be there right away, Aunty,” Polly called, receiving a reassuring
wave from a large, dark green cotton umbrella.
“Now, I begin to feel as though we were getting down to business,” Kate
said, decidedly, as she came from the telephone booth in the hotel
office. “I’ve arranged for our groceries, and they say they can send a
team over about four, because they deliver goods every morning and
afternoon to the hotel and cottages, and we might as well receive ours
that way, too.”
“Did you order stuffed olives and plenty of chocolate, Kate?” Isabel
asked.
“No, ma’am, I did not. We must have solid food, the Admiral says, and no
nonsense. Plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit.”
“Well, I like the incidental trimmings myself,” mourned Isabel.
“Ready?” asked Polly, and the caravan moved, Polly and the Admiral
bringing up the rear.
Just then the two Vaughan sisters came down the hotel steps dressed in
dark blue linen yachting suits, and as they passed, girl fashion, they
smiled at the strangers without the formality of an introduction. Polly
could not wait for time to ripen the acquaintance, but paused and spoke
to them in her impulsive way.
“I only wanted to say,” she began, as the other girls walked on with the
Admiral, “that we are from Virginia, from Queen’s Ferry, and we belong
to a—a—our yacht club. You can see the flag flying over yonder where the
shore curves before you get to the Point. We’re going to live there all
summer, and we’d be ever so glad if you would come down and see us.”
“We’d love to,” Dorothy spoke up, warmly. “This is my sister Bess. We’ll
try to come over some day next week.”
“If you do, we’ll show you how to sail a yacht,” Polly said
encouragingly, but the girls laughed.
“Oh, we go out every day on the bay in our yacht. You can see her from
here. We belong to the Junior Sailing Club at the Orienta.” Bess pointed
eagerly down to the hotel landing. “She is named the _Nixie_.”
Polly followed the direction in which she pointed, and saw a slender,
close-reefed yacht lying just below the boat landing. It was clean and
looked well-dressed, the same as its owners did. From where she stood
Polly caught a sparkle of polished brass work around the cockpit.
“We have plenty of boats, but we haven’t learned how to sail them yet,”
she said. “As soon as we do, we’ll race you.”
“That’s a challenge, remember, and we take it up,” returned Dorothy,
laughing, and Polly hurried ahead to join the others, feeling that she
had won two friends who seemed very much worth while keeping.