“Somebody chopping wood!” exclaimed Peggy, recognizing the sound.

“That’s just what it is, if I ever wielded an axe in my life,” agreed Jimsy; “now logic tells us that an axe can’t work itself.  Therefore somebody must be using it.  Where there is human life there is—­or ought to be—­food.  How about it girls, are you hungry?”

“Hungry!  I could eat anything,” declared Jess.

“I’m almost as bad,” laughed Peggy.

“Well,” said Jimsy, “as there is no sign of the fog lifting yet awhile, what’s the matter with our starting out to find the wood-chopper and seeing if he has anything to eat?”

“Jimsy, you’re a genius,” cried Jess.

“That’s what all my friends tell me,” rejoined the modest youth.

They set off over rough sand dunes, overgrown with coarse grass, in the direction of the sounds of the axe.  The sand was loose and their feet sank ankle deep in it, but they plodded along pluckily.

All at once, just as if a curtain had been drawn, the outlines of a rough shanty appeared in front of them.  It was a tumble-down sort of a place, seemingly made of driftwood and old sacks and bits of canvas.  From a rusty iron stove-pipe on top, a feeble column of blue smoke was ascending.

The noise of chopping had ceased on their approach and as they stood hesitating a strange figure suddenly appeared round the corner of the wretched rookery of a place.  The man, who stood facing them, a startled look in his light blue eyes, was apparently about middle age.  He wore a full beard of a golden brown color and was barefooted and hatless.  His clothes consisted of a tattered shirt and a pair of coarse canvas trousers.

“Well, shiver my toplights!” he cried as his eyes fell on the trio, “whar under ther sun did you come from?  Drop from ther clouds?”

“That’s just what we did,” said the debonnaire Jimsy, as the girls drew back rather affrighted at the weird looking figure and his queer, wild way of talking.

“What’s that?  Don’t try to fool with me young feller.  I ain’t as crazy as I reckon I looks.”

There was a certain dignity about the man when he spoke, that, despite his ragged clothing and miserable habitation, was impressive.

“No, it’s really so,” Jimsy hastened to assure him, “we—­we came in an aeroplane, you know.”

“Well, now,” said the man scratching his head, “I reckon that’s the first of them contrivances to reach Lost Brig Island.”

“Lost Brig Island,” echoed Jess in an alarmed tone; “is this an island?”

“If the geography books still define an island as a body of land surrounded by water, it is,” rejoined the man, with a smile.

“Are we far from Cape Charles?” asked Peggy, eagerly.

“Why, no.  Not more than six miles to the north.  But what under ther sun air you young folks in your fine clothes a-doin’ out here?”

Peggy hastily explained, and the man said that he had seen some reference to the coming contests in a stray paper the light-keepers had given him the last time he passed the lighthouse in a small boat he kept.