The party went in the tug Pinafore, which led a restless, fussy life, puffing about among these islands, making the circuit of Appledore at fixed hours, and acting commonly as a ferry.  Star Island is smaller than Appledore and more barren, but it has the big hotel (and a different class of guests from those on Appledore), and several monuments of romantic interest.  There is the ancient stone church, rebuilt some time in this century; there are some gravestones; there is a monument to Captain John Smith, the only one existing anywhere to that interesting adventurer—­a triangular shaft, with a long inscription that could not have been more eulogistic if he had composed it himself.  There is something pathetic in this lonely monument when we recall Smith’s own touching allusion to this naked rock, on which he probably landed when he once coasted along this part of New England, as being his sole possession in the world at the end of his adventurous career: 

“No lot for me but Smith’s Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the most overgrown with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly pass them; without either grasse or wood, but three or foure short shrubby old cedars.”

Every tourist goes to the south end of Star Island, and climbs down on the face of the precipice to the “Chair,” a niche where a school-teacher used to sit as long ago as 1848.  She was sitting there one day when a wave came up and washed her away into the ocean.  She disappeared.  But she who loses her life shall save it.  That one thoughtless act of hers did more for her reputation than years of faithful teaching, than all her beauty, grace, and attractions.  Her “Chair” is a point of pilgrimage.  The tourist looks at it, guesses at its height above the water, regards the hungry sea with aversion, re-enacts the drama in his imagination, sits in the chair, has his wife sit in it, has his boy and girl sit in it together, wonders what the teacher’s name was, stops at the hotel and asks the photograph girl, who does not know, and the proprietor, who says it’s in a book somewhere, and finally learns that it was Underhill, and straightway forgets it when he leaves the island.

What a delicious place it is, this Appledore, when the elements favor!  The party were lodged in a little cottage, whence they overlooked the hotel and the little harbor, and could see all the life of the place, looking over the bank of flowers that draped the rocks of the door-yard.  How charming was the miniature pond, with the children sailing round and round, and the girls in pretty costumes bathing, and sunlight lying so warm upon the greenish-gray rocks!  But the night, following the glorious after-glow, the red sky, all the level sea, and the little harbor burnished gold, the rocks purple—­oh! the night, when the moon came!  Oh, Irene!  Great heavens! why will this world fall into such a sentimental fit, when all the sweetness and the light of it are away at Bar Harbor!