“Ship ahoy!” shouted Daniel, waving his cap as the boat approached.

“Ahoy, there!” answered the Captain, and in a moment the keel grated on the sand, and the Goodman turned to his wife and daughter.

“The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from the other,” he said reverently, and “Amen!” boomed the Captain.  Then there were kisses and good-byes, and soon Nancy and her mother were alone on the shore, waving their hands until the boat was a mere speck on the dancing blue waters.  As it neared the Lucy Ann, they went back to the cabin, and there they watched the white sails gleaming in the sun until they disappeared around a headland.

“Come, Nancy,” said her mother when the ship was quite out of sight, “idleness will only make loneliness harder to bear.  Here is a task for thee.”  She handed her a basket of raw wool.  “Take this and card it for me to spin.”

Nancy hated carding with all her heart, but she rose obediently, brought the basket to the doorway, and, sitting down in the sunshine, patiently carded the wool into little wisps ready to be wound on a spindle and spun into yarn by the mother’s skillful hands.

Meanwhile Daniel was standing on the deck of the Lucy Ann, drinking in the fresh salt breeze and eagerly watching the shores as the boat passed between Charlestown and Boston and dropped anchor in the harbor to set the Captain’s lobster-pots.  All the wonderful bright day they sailed past rocky islands and picturesque headlands, with the Captain at the tiller skillfully keeping the vessel to the course and at the same time spinning yarns to Daniel and his father about the adventures which had overtaken him at various points along the coast.  At Governor’s Island he had caught a giant lobster.  He had been all but wrecked in a fog off Thompson’s Island.

“Ye see that point of land,” he said, waving his hand toward a rocky promontory extending far out into the bay.  “That ’s Squantum.  Miles Standish of Plymouth named it that after an Indian that was a good friend of the Colony in the early days.  Well, right off there I was overhauled by a French privateer once.  ‘Privateer’ is a polite name for a pirate ship.  She was loaded with molasses, indigo, and such from the West Indies, and I had a cargo of beaver-skins.  If it had n’t been that her sailors was mostly roarin’ drunk at the time, it ’s likely that would have been the end of Thomas Sanders, skipper, sloop, and all, but my boat was smaller and quicker than theirs, and, knowing these waters so well, I was able to give ’em the slip and get out into open sea; and here I be!  Ah, those were the days!”