We were off at once, and I sat astern near the ancient.  Yves had gone forward and the doctor, after the usual totally unnecessary concern as to rugs and either useless things, followed him and appeared to practice his French on the sailor.

“That there Frenchy,” Captain Sammy confided to me, “is most crazy over th’ young ’un.  I never did see sich a thing in all me born days.”

“He must be awfully proud of such a dear little son,” I answered.

“There’s them as says it ain’t the son o’ he,” replied Sammy.  “He don’t never talk about the bye.  They says he jist picked him up somewheres, jist some place or other.  You would hardly think what a plenty they is as have fathers or mothers neither, along th’ coast.”

This opened to me a vista of troops of kiddies wandering up and down the cliffs, wailing the poor daddies that will never be given back by the rough sea, and the mothers who found life harder than they could bear, and it saddened me.  You always said I must beware of my imagination, but I think there was a funded reality in that vision.  Then I was compelled to look about me, for we were passing through headlands at the narrow mouth of the cove, the long lift of the open sea bore us up and down again, softly, like an easy low swing.  That terrible reek of fish had disappeared and the air was laden with the delightful pungency of clean seaweed and the pure saltiness of the great waters.  North and south of us extended the rocky coastline all frilled, at the foot of the great ledges, with the pearly spume of the long rollers.

It was very early when we arrived in the Snowbird, and I was not on deck very long.  It didn’t seem nearly so beautiful then, and I had no idea that it would be like this.

“It is perfectly marvelous,” I told Captain Sammy.  “But it is a terrible coast.  How do you ever manage to get back in storms and fogs?  The mouth of the cove is nothing but a tiny hole in the face of the cliffs.”

“Times when they is nought but fog maybe we smells ’un,” he replied, with the most solemn gravity.

“I hadn’t thought of such an obvious thing,” I replied, laughing.  “It seems quite possible.  But how about gales?”

“They is times when we has to run to some o’ the bays north or south of us fer shelter,” he answered.  “I’ve allers been able to fetch ’un.”

“But what if you were carried out to sea?”

“Then likely I’d git ketched, like so many others has, ma’am.”

And then, Aunt Jennie dear, in spite of the shining of the bright sun upon the glittering water and the softness of the air that was caressing my face, I felt very sad for a moment.  It looked like a very cruel world for all of its present smiling.  On this coast the elements seem always to be waiting for their prey, just as, in the shelter of ledges deep beneath our keel, unspeakable slimy things with wide glaucous eyes are lying in watch, with tentacles outspread.