There was no boat of any sort to be seen, near or far away, but I woke Jerry so that we could both keep watch in case one came.  Just as Jerry crawled out of the cave and stretched himself stiffly, Greg took his hand away from mine and blinked out at the sky, and said in almost his own voice: 

“Have we been here all the time?”

“Yes, all the time, ducky,” I said, and then I cried, “Don’t try to move, Gregs!” for I saw him trying to squirm over.

He lay back and said “Why?” but then in an instant he knew why.  I couldn’t do anything but cuddle my cheek down against his, and he sobbed: 

“Make me stop crying, Chris.”

The light grew stronger and stronger till there were shadows among the rocks and Wecanicut came out green and brown.  Jerry came back presently, and I wondered if he’d seen anything, but he said: 

“Chris, I just wanted to ask you.  How long does it take for a person to starve?”

I said days, I thought, and Jerry sighed a little and went back to his watching-place.  Somehow I didn’t feel very hungry, myself,—­that is, not the kind of hungry you are when you’ve played tennis all morning and then gone in swimming.  There was a sharp, sickish feeling inside me and my head felt a little queer, but it was not exactly like being hungry.

I think Greg’s arm must have stopped hurting quite so badly, or else he was being tremendously spunky, because we talked a lot and I told him that Father would come for us pretty soon.  I didn’t feel at all sure of this, because I knew that Father would never have given up the Sea Monster the night before if he’d had any idea we were there.  But it was so perfectly blessed to have Greg talking sensibly at all, even with such a wobbly sort of voice, that I didn’t much care what I said.

All at once Jerry came tumbling around the corner, shouting: 

“Oh, Chris, come quick! Hurry!”

I left Greg and ran after Jerry, and I’d been sitting so long humped up on the rocks that my knees gave way and I barked my shins against a sharp ledge.  I didn’t even know it until ever so long afterwards, when I found a bruise as big as a saucer and remembered then.  Jerry didn’t need to point so wildly out across the water; I saw the boat before he could say a word.  It was a catboat, quite far off, tacking down from the Headland.  The sail was orange, and we’d never seen an orange sail in our harbor or anywhere, in fact, so we knew it must be a strange boat.

Jerry pulled off his shirt like winking and stood there in his bare arms waving it madly.  We both began to shout before the catboat people could possibly have heard us, but we thought that they might see the white shirt flying up and down.  The boat was tacking a long leg and a short one.  The long one carried it so far out that we thought it was going to cross the mouth of the bay and not come near enough to see us.  Jerry stopped shouting just long enough to gasp: