Captain Davis laughed.
"Well, it is pretty nigh ground-glass now," he answered, "but it wa'n't when it was put in. The sand did that. It blows like all possessed when there's a gale on.""Do you mean that those windows were ground that way by the beach sand blowing against them?" asked Ralph, astonished.
"Sartin. Git a good no'therly wind comin' up the beach and it fetches the sand with it. Mighty mean stuff to face, sand blowin'
like that is; makes you think you're fightin' a nest of yaller-jackets."
With the telescope in the cupola they could see for miles up and down the beach and out to sea. An ocean tug bound toward Boston was passing, and Elsie, looking through the glass, saw the cook come out of the galley, empty a pan over the side, and go back again.
"Let me look through that a minute," said Captain Eri, when the rest had had their turn. He swung the glass around until it pointed toward their home away up the shore.
"Perez," he called anxiously, "look here quick!"Captain Perez hastily put his eye to the glass, and his friend went on:
"You see our house?" he said. "Yes; well, you see the dinin'-room door. Notice that chair by the side of it?""Yes, what of it?"
"Well, that's the rocker that Elsie made the velvet cushion for. Iwant you to look at the upper southeast corner of that cushion, and see if there ain't a cat's hair there. Lorenzo's possessed to sleep in that chair, and--""Oh, you git out!" indignantly exclaimed Captain Perez, straightening up.
"Well, it was a pretty important thing, and I wanted to make sure.
I left that chair out there, and I knew what I'd catch if any cat's hairs got on that cushion while I was gone. Ain't that so, Mrs.
Snow?"
The housekeeper expressed her opinion that Captain Eri was a "case," whatever that may be.
They had clam chowder for dinner--a New England clam chowder, made with milk and crackers, and clams with shells as white as snow.
They were what the New Yorker calls "soft-shell" clams, for a Fulton Market chowder is a "quahaug soup" to the native of the Cape.
Now that chowder was good; everybody said so, and if the proof of the chowder, like that of the pudding, is in the eating of it, this one had a clear case. Also, there were boiled striped bass, which is good enough for anybody, hot biscuits, pumpkin pie, and beach-plum preserves. There was a running fire of apologies from Miss Patience and answering volleys of compliments from Mrs. Snow.
"I don't see how you make sech beach-plum preserves, Miss Davis,"exclaimed the lady from Nantucket. "I declare! I'm goin' to ask you for another sasserful. I b'lieve they're the best I ever ate.""Well, now! Do you think so? I kind of suspected that the plums was a little mite too ripe. You know how 'tis with beach-plums, they've got to be put up when they're jest so, else they ain't good for much. I was at Luther for I don't know how long 'fore I could git him to go over to the P'int and pick 'em, and I was 'fraid he'd let it go too long. I only put up twenty-two jars of 'em on that account. How much sugar do you use?"There was material here for the discussion that country housewives love, and the two ladies took advantage of it. When it was over the female portion of the company washed the dishes, while the men walked up and down the beach and smoked. Here they were joined after a while by the ladies, for even by the ocean it was as mild as early May, and the wind was merely bracing and had no sting in it.
The big blue waves shouldered themselves up from the bosom of the sea, marched toward the beach, and tumbled to pieces in a roaring tumult of white and green. The gulls skimmed along their tops or dropped like falling stones into the water after sand eels, emerging again, screaming, to repeat the performance.
The conversation naturally turned to wrecks, and Captain Davis, his reserve vanishing before the tactful inquiries of the captains and Ralph, talked shop and talked it well.
