POLLY’S “CURRENT EVENTS”
“Put it down in the log book, Kate, under the head of current events,”
Polly said that night, as she sat beside Crullers’ couch, and they all
discussed the rescue. “And don’t say heroism again. It wasn’t anything
of the kind. It was just plain common sense.”
“That’s so,” agreed the Captain, smiling shrewdly. “It’s an awful
embarrassing thing, this being a hero, Miss Polly. I’ve had to go
through it several times, more or less, whenever I happened to haul some
landlubber out of deep water, and I can sympathize with you.”
“Just the same, Captain, you’ll never know how glad I was to see that
life-boat round the Point. The tide was setting me at my wits’ end, and
I never would have got the _Tidy Jane_ back by myself.”
“She’s powerful skittish once she gets the smell of the open sea,” the
Captain remarked.
“Yes, and they helped me get the salt water out of Crullers too,” added
Polly. “I’ll bet a cooky she won’t like salt for a year, after that one
good taste of it.”
Crullers laughed feebly. But the other girls could not make light of the
affair. It had seemed altogether too serious and tragic, when they had
watched those two frail, white-winged little boats drifting straight in
the face of danger, and then Crullers’ frantic leap into the sea, and
the coming of the life-boat around the Point. It all savored too much of
real tragedy, Kate and Ruth said, and it ought to teach them a good
lesson.
The life savers had picked up Crullers’ boat midway down the channel,
and had towed the _Tidy Jane_ in under bare poles. Polly and Crullers
had been taken up to the Station, Crullers, dripping and half
unconscious, carried in the arms of the Captain, while Polly walked
along the narrow boardwalk behind them, and the rest of crew followed,
five men altogether. At the Station, Crullers had a personal experience
with “first aid” methods, for she had not kept her mouth closed when she
had gone under, and as the Captain said she had “shipped a sea.”
The other girls returned to Lost Island in their boats, as soon as
possible, and prepared Aunty Welcome; then walked back on the shore road
to meet the Captain when he came along carrying Crullers wrapped up like
a papoose in a real, United States Life Saving Corps blanket.
That night Mrs. Carey had come over to the island cottage to make sure
that Crullers was doing well. Aunty Welcome had dosed her with hot
ginger tea, which as Polly said was punishment enough in itself with a
July thermometer climbing toward the nineties. She had also had a warm
mustard bath, and lay wrapped in a blanket on a couch in the
living-room. The Captain sat on a camp stool, and whittled away at a new
pintle bolt for Crullers’ rudder. He said nothing all the time the girls
told of the day’s adventures to Mrs. Carey, not even when Polly said she
was glad the life boat had come after them, but he nodded his head
slowly.
“Aren’t you going to scold us any?” asked Polly, finally. “We should
have started for home sooner, and maybe we didn’t manage the yachts just
right. It was a queer wind that came with the tide. It blew from the
southwest—”
“West by sou’west,” corrected the Captain gravely.
“Yes, sir,” Polly agreed. “So we had to beat our way back criss cross
over the bay to catch any good from it.”
“You needn’t explain,” the Captain shook his head, his eyes twinkling
under their shaggy brows. “I’m ashamed of you all, getting the crew out
on a day when there was hardly a ripple on the bay.”
“We didn’t call for help,” Polly pleaded. “They must have heard the
_Portland’s_ whistle. I am sorry about it. The captain of the _Portland_
must think we’re a nice lot of yacht lubbers. More likely he’s calling
us yacht lubbers.”
“I met him at the hotel to-night when I went down to telephone,” said
the Captain, slowly.
“Oh, what did he say about us?” the girls broke in. “Please tell us,
Captain Carey.”
“He said that the girl in the _Tidy Jane_ deserved a medal for the way
she handled her boat, and saved the little fat one.” The Captain’s face
was quite serious.
“I didn’t do anything to Crullers except pull her over into the _Jane_,”
said Polly, blushing. “She’d have kept afloat anyway till the life boat
reached her. She was floating lovely with all those little buoys on
her.”
“I was not,” protested Crullers, indignantly. “I was just full of salt
water. I swallowed gallons of it when I went under that first time.”
Polly was watching the Captain’s countenance as the barometer of his
opinion on the matter, but it betrayed little. He listened to all they
had to say; then finally leaned back and closed his big jack knife. Mrs.
Carey had gone out into the kitchen to confer with Aunty Welcome about
the need of a doctor.
“I was expecting it,” said the Captain at last. “I’ve been telling all
along, to Tom, and Nancy, and mother, that there’d be some doings pretty
soon, and they came a little sooner than I expected. You’d better not go
sailing about too much after this unless you’re sure of yourselves. For
if you can get all tangled up like that on a fair day, where would you
be in a sudden squall? I’ll expect now every time we get a good breath
of wind to look over the bay and see one of the yachts floating around
bottom up, and a couple of you youngsters hanging on to it by your
eyelids. Now mind what I say, keep down at this end of the bay, out of
the channel and away from the other craft, till you know enough to get
out of the way. What were you doing out there anyhow, trying to round
the Point?”
The girls had nearly forgotten their adventure at Smugglers’ Cove in the
newer excitement of the accident, but now they told of the day there,
and of the mystery, until the Captain leaned back his head and laughed
over it.
“Now, who do you suppose it can be, Captain?” asked Isabel and Ted in
one breath.
“Is there a passage from that cave up to the old ruins?” Kate added.
“They were footprints with shoes on,” Sue exclaimed.
“Were they indeed?” The Captain laughed till he coughed, and wiped the
tears out of his eyes. “Well, now, you take my advice and keep off the
island, for I’m thinking it’s inhabited.”
“Do you know who lives there?” Polly leaned forward to meet his glance,
and the Captain slowly winked, oh, but so wisely and cautiously.
“I am saying nothing,” he told them. “Can you hear me?”
Mrs. Carey appeared in the doorway just then.
“Come along home, father,” she said. “We’ve decided not to get any
doctor. I guess Welcome’s about right. She says they frets around, and
muddles things up, and gets in the way, and she can mix up just as queer
a mess as they can any time. I don’t think the child is hurt much,
anyhow. She’s pretty well scared, and salted, and that’s about all.
Polly, I’ll send over some fresh string beans and a mess of peas in the
morning by Nancy, and Tom’s going to the village if you need anything.”
“Aren’t they good to us?” Polly said, as she came back after saying
goodbye and watching the gleam of the lantern swing along the hummocks
over to the shore road. “I thought he’d scold us hard.”
“We deserved it,” Kate answered, calmly, as she stuffed a couple of sofa
cushions back of her head, and clasped her hands on them. “Here we’ve
stopped a steamer, excited all her passengers and crew, made the
life-savers hustle out in fair weather, and generally let everybody
around Eagle Bay know what a lot of lubbers we are at handling yachts,
all because Crullers’ pintle bolt got twisted and she took a jump
overboard. It’s lucky, Polly, the Admiral isn’t here. He’d send us all
back to Queen’s Landing in a jiffy.”
“We didn’t mean to make so much trouble,” Polly answered cheerily, as
she shook up Crullers’ pillow, and got her a glass of fresh water for
the night. “I’m only thankful it was no worse. Let’s make the best of
it. Let’s make an interesting invalid out of Crullers. Aunty Welcome
says she must stay in bed to-morrow till all danger is over of chills or
fever or stomach upsetness. I’m going to loan her my pink kimono to wear
over her nightgown, and we’ll bring in some wild roses from the shore
road, and entertain her with a—oh, girls, I know what.” Polly stopped
short, her eyes sparkling as they always did when she had a sudden idea.
“Let’s give her a ‘Sea Social.’ We were going to have one some evening,
but now we’ll do it to-morrow afternoon. We can get the Vaughan girls
over. Have Tom leave word at the hotel for them, and Nancy will come,
and we’ll all sing sea songs and recite sea poetry, and we’ll have a
lunch right out of the sea, fried flounder.”
“I wish we could have crab _a la_ Newburg,” Isabel remarked musingly.
Polly went to the open window, and stretched out her arms seaward, as
she sang:
“Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Come, I pray, and talk to me.
For my wife, Dame Isabel,
Wishes what I fear to tell.”
She turned just in time to catch the pillow that Isabel sent flying
across the room, and they all sat down to make up a program for
Crullers’ “Sea Social.”
It was a great success. Even Mrs. Carey came over, with a fresh
gingerbread and a pail of rich cream.
“They go mighty nice together,” she said, smilingly, and the girls
agreed with her before the feast was over.
Dorothy and Bess made the trip across the bay in the _Nixie_, to call on
the invalid, and lend their share to the social side of the afternoon.
Crullers had never been the guest of honor anywhere before, but she was
that day, as she sat up on the couch in the living-room, with Polly’s
long pink kimono around her, and pink wild roses fastened on each side
her braids, above her ears, in Japanese fashion.
The glee club played all the sea songs they could remember, and all
hands piped up merrily from “Nancy Lee” to “Anchored.” Then Polly
announced that the best part of the program was yet to come. Each of the
girls would render her favorite poem about the sea, and Crullers had to
start the ball rolling.
“I only know the one about the ‘Schooner Hesperus,’ Polly,” she said,
shyly, “and I like it best of all.”
“Say it, then,” Polly told her. “We like it, too.”
Then Kate recited “The Three Fishers,” her slow, contralto tones and
rather dreamy air well fitting themselves to the sad old verses. Isabel
gave “Annabel Lee” most touchingly, and Polly ordered a quick song in
happier vein to offset the sadness of the two. So after a rousing “Billy
was a Bo’sun,” Ted got up, and declaimed the only poem on the sea she
knew, one she had had to memorize at Calvert Hall as a punishment for
putting the house cat into Fraulein’s shirtwaist box, and scaring her
nearly into a fainting fit (Fraulein, not the cat).
“The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea,
And sitting there a while alone,
I dreamed that Greece might yet be free.”
Polly always liked to watch Ted’s face when she came to that verse. She
would lift her chin, and her gray eyes would flash, and her fists
clench. At Calvert Hall Ted had always been the most successful
“declaimer,” as Miss Calvert termed it, and she “fixed Greece good and
plenty” this time; so Sue said when it was over.
Dorothy declared she didn’t know any poem about the ocean, but she would
sing “Sweet and Low” if they liked.
“Not too low, please,” Crullers said, eagerly, “or I won’t hear all the
words away over here.”
“I declare, Crullers,” laughed Kate. “We should have nicknamed you
Stubs, for if there’s a possible thing for you to stumble over, you do
it.”
Polly recited her favorite, “The Chambered Nautilus,” and as she came to
the last verse Mrs. Carey closed her eyes and smiled, her hand up to her
face, as the grand old words rang out.
“Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul
As the swift seasons roll.
Leave thy low vaulted past,
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell,
By life’s unresting sea.”
“Oh, I love that,” Nancy cried, her blue eyes sparkling as Polly
finished. “Father would, too.”
“Now, there’s just Bess, and Mrs. Carey, and you left, Nancy,” Kate
said. “Come, Bess, do something.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything,” Bess said, shyly.
“Yes, she does, too,” Dorothy laughed. “Make her say the poem from
‘Alice in Wonderland’ about the whiting and the snail.”
All the girls added their persuasion and Bess agreed. She was only
thirteen, and small for her age, with a mass of yellow, square-cut curls
around her mischievous face, and she had plenty of freckles. The
piquant, teasing look on her face was delicious as she asked,
plaintively, coaxingly,
“Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the
dance,
Oh, will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you, won’t
you join the dance?”
“Now, Mrs. Carey and Nancy are next,” Kate said, as soon as the applause
had stopped, and Crullers leaned back on her pillow flushed and radiant
over the merriment.
“Well, now, we didn’t expect to speak any pieces,” Mrs. Carey answered,
her pleasant motherly face beaming around at them with love and
kindliness. She used to say that she’d got so in the habit of mothering
the two children and the Captain that it was just second nature to her
to mother anything in sight. “I don’t know any poetry, and neither does
Nancy, but if you like I’ll read you something that we think’s the
finest poetry ever was written about the sea, and then Nancy can sing
her favorite hymn, ‘Pull for the Shore.’”
She stepped back into the kitchen and spoke to Aunty Welcome, and
presently returned with the latter’s Bible in her hand. Sitting there in
the cool, cosy room, whose windows all opened to the sea, she read that
beautiful Psalm that both she and the Captain loved to read aloud, the
One Hundred and Fourth, with its grand old song about He “who layeth the
beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds His chariot:
who walketh upon the wings of the wind: who maketh His angels spirits,
and His ministers a flame of fire.”
Then Nancy’s clear, sweet voice fairly made the little room ring with
the hymn she loved:
“Light in the darkness, sailor,
Day is at hand,
See o’er the foaming billow,
Fair haven land.”
After it was over, and they had all gone excepting the yacht club girls
themselves, Crullers said she thought it was the happiest time she had
ever had, and the next day she was able to “rise and shine,” as Aunty
Welcome told her, and take up life again.
Things were very quiet at the island for a week after the mishap in the
bay. The girls restricted their sailing to the west end of the bay, down
towards Fair Havens, and Polly was busy finding out how to manage
yachts, keep them in repair, and so on, and she called Tom to account
roundly.
“Just look at these seams in the _Tidy Jane_, Tom,” she said one day,
when they were down at the landing overhauling the boats. “Don’t they
need re-caulking?”
“I guess not,” Tom responded, easily. “Father and I went all over them
last spring, when we did the rest. They’ll swell after they’ve been in
the water a few weeks anyhow. Sometimes when you caulk a boat up too
tight, she’ll spring on you.”
“All right, then, but just look at the paint, will you? It’s fairly
peeling off in some places, Tom. You won’t find any of the Orienta boats
looking like that.”
Tom looked at her, his eyes beginning to twinkle as his father’s did.
“I know what you’re up to,” he laughed. “You’re going to race in the
regatta!”
Polly said nothing, but she kept on her course of fitting out for the
race. The Orienta was to open its club house the first of August for the
regatta season. It had been open as a club house since the first of
June, but officially it welcomed the sailing world from the first of
August until the fifteenth, the day of the first run. Even from the
porch of the little cottage on the Knob, the girls could look across the
bay to where the handsome red and white club house stood midway between
the hotel and the row of summer cottages that straggled along the north
shore all the way to the Inlet. As long as the girls lived on Eagle Bay,
they never knew the name of the little river that rambled down between
the bluffs and mingled with the channel waters. Everyone called it the
Inlet, so they did too.
At one side of the club house was built a tall yacht shed, for the
housing of such boats as were left there in the winter time. The best
ones came up from the south, Dorothy said. Not way down south, but
around Boston harbor, and Long Island, and New York. Her father’s big
sloop would be the flag ship at the regatta, she told them, for he was
the commodore of the challenging club.
“They don’t have a flag ship at a regatta,” Tom had interposed. “I never
raced in one, but I’ve watched them ever since I was knee high to a
toadstool. There’s just the racing yachts, and the judge’s boat, and
they divide them into different classes.”
“I thought that was what they called it,” Dorothy said, in her pretty,
half serious way, and Tom walked away, grinning blandly over the ways of
girl people in general.
The Admiral had written that he was surely coming north regatta week,
and Polly felt a growing emulation in her breast, a feeling of pride in
the Polly Page Yacht Club, against this mighty rival.
“Let’s go over there and watch them overhaul their yachts,” she said
finally, the day before the opening; so they tramped around the shore
road to Orienta Point. Almost the first persons they saw were the
Vaughan girls, sitting up on the broad veranda with a lot of ladies and
young girls.
“This looks like a celebration of some kind, girls,” Kate said, merrily.
“We had better be careful.”
The others hesitated for a moment. They were dressed as usual in their
dark blue yachting suits, with white sailor collars, and white duck
knockabout hats to match. Even from where they stood, there was surely a
festive appearance to the club group. But the girls had already seen
them, and came hurrying down the steps to meet them, with outstretched
hands and glad smiles of welcome.
“Oh, I’m so glad you came over at last,” cried Bess. “Mamma wants you
all to come up and join us. To-morrow’s the official guest day, but
mamma’s giving a tea this afternoon to the lady visitors, and we Juniors
are helping pass cake and things. Come up, now, for we’ve just been
telling about how Polly saved Crullers’ life the other night.”
“Oh, but I didn’t,” exclaimed Polly, reddening under her coat of tan.
“Truly, Bess, I didn’t. Crullers, I mean Jane Daphne Adams here, jumped
overboard, and she was floating comfortably with three buoys attached to
her when I helped her into the boat.”
“Well, the captain of the _Portland_ didn’t tell it that way,” Dorothy
said. “He came up to the hotel that evening and told us all about it. He
said that you were the pluckiest girl he had ever seen handle a yacht
alone. Won’t you please come up, and let mamma talk to you about it?
She’s ever so anxious to meet all of you girls from the island camp
anyway, for Bess and I have talked of you so frequently.”
“But we really hadn’t better to-day, had we, Polly?” Ruth’s eyes
questioned Polly. What would Miss Calvert say if she knew six of her
best girls had attended a yacht club afternoon tea in blue duck.
“It’s the correct thing to do,” Bess persisted, laughing at their
perplexity. “The law of yacht clubs gives a tacit membership, papa says,
to all members of other clubs who may be in the neighborhood. And they
can’t always be in party attire, you know.”
“Oh, let’s, Polly,” pleaded Isabel. So Ruth and Polly led the way up the
broad steps to the veranda, with its handsome awnings, potted palms, and
dark green wicker chairs and tables scattered invitingly about.
Mrs. Vaughan welcomed them cordially and introduced them to the other
ladies and a lot of the “Juniors,” girls of their own age, and friends
of Dorothy’s and Bess’s.
“And you are all Southern girls, Dolly tells me,” she said, looking from
one face to the other. “Virginia girls. How did you ever happen to drift
away up on our rocky coast?”
Polly explained how it had all happened, and then she discovered that
Mrs. Vaughan was an old friend of her Aunt Milly, Mrs. Holmes, and knew
the four boy cousins.
“So you must not remain isolated over at the Knob after this, girls,”
she told them at parting, when they had partaken of ice cream, delicate
shrimp and lobster salad sandwiches, and tea. “The Orienta is very gay
during August, and we have a good many Junior functions for our younger
element. I will speak to the Commodore about your club and see that it
is listed for the regatta, and whenever you are able to come over I will
chaperon all of you and see that you get back safely. We have our
touring car up here, and you can all go home in that, you know, any
time.”
“Well, forevermore,” gasped Polly, as they trudged back homeward with
the sunset spreading its glory over the world of land and sea and sky.
“Girls, we have stumbled all unawares into society. Let’s conduct
ourselves as angels. Whatever will grandfather say!”
“Did you notice their dresses?” asked Isabel, her eyes dreamy with rapt
remembrance. “That one which Mrs. Vaughan wore was sheer,
hand-embroidered batiste, and the long coat was of real Irish crochet.”
“I don’t believe she sleeps one bit better than I do,” said Sue,
recklessly.
“But, Sue, did you notice Dorothy’s dress?” persisted Isabel. “It was
white organdie over pale yellow silk that just matched the tea roses in
the pattern. I love clothes that show good taste.”
“Now, Lady Vanitas,” said Polly, reprovingly. “Don’t let your heart
dwell so on raiment. Lilies of the field, you know. It was pretty, and
there you are. We’ve all brought our Commencement Day dresses along for
Sundays, so we’ll freshen them up, and I guess we can go to the ball
without the help of any god-mothers or pumpkins. I don’t feel one bit
bothered over the social side of it, but how can we hold our own in a
regatta, girls? It’s so kind of Mrs. Vaughan to invite us to join them,
isn’t it? How funny our little fifteen-footers will look alongside the
big forty- and sixty-footers.”
“But she said they were going to have special entries for the Junior
events, don’t you remember?” Sue interrupted eagerly. “I don’t see why
we couldn’t enter for them. Dorothy and Bess are going to sail their
yacht, and they say there are five or six others who are going in.”
“Then we will sail ours,” Polly retorted. “I have intended to all along,
but I wanted some encouragement. I wouldn’t race with a great yacht
towering over me like a genii just out of a bottle, but I’ll pit the
_Tidy Jane_ against any yacht of her build along the whole coast of
North America.”
“Hurrah!” Sue threw her cap up into the air. “Wait till you see the
_Patsy D._ come up gallantly in the wind, and grab the Orienta Junior
cup away from all of you.”
It gave them plenty to talk about and plan for, at all events. As Ruth
said the following morning, the summer was not half long enough for all
the things they planned to do. They rose early, any time between five
and six. Nobody except a clam could have slept with the sun coming up
like a great, golden blossom behind Bald Bluff, and the sea running
along the beach with little waves like dancing feet, calling to one to
come and play too.
They tried over and over again to divide each day systematically, but,
as Polly said, “current events tripped them up.” Aunty Welcome protested
that she would do the washing, ironing, cooking, and kitchen work, but
not a tap more; so each took care of her own room, and Polly looked out
for the living-room besides. Sue had chosen the veranda for her special
charge, and she kept it spotless. They had brought along two hammocks,
and had found another one rolled up with the porch mats under a window
seat. The three hung out on the veranda temptingly, and through the long
warm afternoons, when they were not sailing, the girls would sit out
there and make all sorts of decorative things out of the shells in their
collection, while Ruth read aloud. The very week of their arrival, she
had gone across the bay with Nancy in the _Pirate_ and had discovered
the village circulating library.
“I do believe, Grandma,” Polly had said, merrily, when she saw her
returning with a brand new book, “that if you landed on the coast of
South Africa, you’d ask the first gorilla you met, very politely, if he
would please direct you to the nearest circulating library.”
But Ruth refused to be teased about her hobby, so the girls desisted.
She loved books, however, and would have walked all the way to Eastport
in order to get a fresh one. So with her rimless eyeglasses planted
firmly on the bridge of her nose, the nose that turned up ever so little
at the world in anxious inquiry, she smiled placidly at Polly, and
hugged a new volume to her heart every time she went over the bay.
“You’re all ready enough to listen while I read aloud, just the same,”
she told them, when they all settled themselves out on the porch, and
called for the after-dinner reading. No one contradicted her. Polly was
over in her favorite hammock at the southwesterly corner, her lap full
of shells, and some sandpaper, with which she was trying to polish their
outer side. Sue, Isabel, and Crullers leaned against the railing, so
that their hair would hang over and dry in the sunlight. Only two of the
girls wore caps when in bathing, and Aunty Welcome declared that their
hair would be fairly pickled before they reached home.
“It’s ‘Treasure Island’ this time, girls,” Ruth announced.
“Smugglers’ Cove,” murmured Sue, mischievously. “See what an effect it
had on her, oh, dear; oh, dear.”
Ruth uttered a sudden exclamation, and slipped into the house.
“There was another parcel in our mail box to-day,” she said, as she came
back. “I forgot to give it to you.”
“This makes the fourth,” Polly declared, taking it from her, and
handling it gingerly. “And they all come from Smugglers’ Cove. The first
one had new magazines in it, and some patent fish hooks that Sue ran off
with, and we haven’t seen since.”
“The second was chocolate mints.”
“Oh, my, weren’t they good?” Crullers added.
“Third, a full and complete Manual on Conchology and Sea-life, suitable
for young persons marooned on an isle,” concluded Polly, returning with
a pair of scissors to cut the twine. “I wonder what this is?”
It was addressed, as the other parcels had been, simply to “The Yacht
Club, Lost Island, Eagle Bay, Maine.” Polly opened it while the rest
stood around. One wrapping after another was removed, and finally a box
appeared. When this was opened, there lay a microscope, a fine one, with
several different removable lenses for observing specimens.
“Well, what a darling, tasty old pirate he is,” exclaimed Polly,
joyously. “He seems to know all our needs. We’ll have to send something
to him in return, girls.”
“I’ll make him a shell portìere to hang in front of his cave,” said
Kate, soberly. Scarcely had she spoken when a strange and unusual sound
broke the stillness of the bay.
“That sounds like a motor boat,” Polly said, instantly. “Maybe it’s the
one from the _Hippocampus_.”
It was surely a motor boat, but not the bright-railed, mahogany-trimmed
one from the _Hippocampus_. This was white, with a high, pointed prow, a
cabin, and a cockpit similar to Nancy’s knockabout. But there the
resemblance ended. The mast had been removed, and a small gasoline
engine provided the power.
“I can see the name on the prow,” called Ted presently. “It’s the
_Natica_.”
“Natica means a sea snail,” Ruth explained, with absent-minded reversion
to lessons, but Polly dropped her shells helter-skelter into the
hammock, and rose.
“I know who it is, girls,” she cried. “That’s our smuggler!”