Sitting on the upper deck, we talked and read, and watched the water slowly drawing away from our houseboat until all about us was bare ground; to starboard a narrow strip of it between us and the channel, and to port a wide stretch of it between us and the shore.

We thought most and talked most of the historic island on the edge of which we had become squatters.  It was a small stage for the world-shaping drama that had been enacted upon it.

Toward evening the tide turned again and the truant waters came back, lapping once more the sides of our boat.  The Commodore had to see that anchors were run ahead and astern, and all made snug for the night.  Then, in the enjoyment of one of the most charming features of houseboating, an evening meal served on the upper deck, we watched the sun dip down behind the island and the twilight shadows gather in.

Still about us was no sight or sound of human life.  The shadows deepened and darkness came.  Then gradually a faint silvery light stole over water and marsh and wooded shore; and the stillness was broken by a burst of faint, high, tremulous tones, as though a host of unseen hands swept tiny invisible mandolins.  The silvery light came from the rising moon; the rest was just mosquitoes.

Next day, as soon as Gadabout was afloat, she started up stream again to find the bridge and a landing-place.  There was no trouble about the channel this time.  The waterway, as if taking pity upon indifferent navigators, suddenly contracted to a very narrow stream, deep almost from bank to bank, so that we could not well have got out of the channel if we had tried.  In such a place, we were stout-hearted mariners and the good houseboat stemmed the waters gallantly.  Already we were thinking of how we too, in passing “Pyping Point,” should sound a blast most lustily.  Perhaps it would not be exactly a “musical note” such as the townspeople were used to; but being two or three centuries dead, they probably would not notice the difference.  However, we did not subject them to the experiment.  Instead, we suddenly reversed our engine; Gadabout tried to stop in time; the ladies tried to look pleasant; the Commodore tried to shun over-expressive speech.  There, just ahead, was a row of close-set pilings, blocking the stream from shore to shore.

There was nothing to do but to turn back, run around the island, and attempt to get in behind it at the other end.  We probably should have tried the upper entrance in the first place had it not been that our chart showed by dotted lines some sort of obstruction there, while it did not at all indicate the barrier we had just encountered.  Fortunately, as the tide was now rising and as we had got some knowledge of the channel, Gadabout made good progress in returning down the stream, and was soon out in the wide James again, sailing along the front of the island.

As we proceeded, the marshes gave way to a bank of good height edged with a gravel beach.  Buildings were now in sight, and horses and cattle grazing.  We passed a pier with a warehouse on it, bearing a sign which read, “Jamestown Island, Site of the First Permanent English Settlement in America, 1607.”