CHAPTER XV

TWO GIRLS IN A BOAT—TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG!

“Oh, Dot! do come here. Did you ever see such a funny thing in all your life?”

Tess Kenway was just as earnest as though the discovery she had made was really of great moment. The two bare-legged girls were on the sands below the tent colony of Willowbend, and the tide was out.

The receding waves had just left this wet flat bare. Here and there the sand still dimpled to the heave of the tide, and little rivers of water ran into the hollows and out again.

“What is the matter, Tess?” asked Dot, wonderingly.

“See!”

Tess pointed down at her feet—where the drab, wet sand showed lighter-colored under the pressure of her weight.

“What is it?” gasped the amazed Dot.

There was a tiny round hole in the sand—just like an ant hole, only there was no “hill” thrown up about it. As Tess tip-tilted on her toes to bring more pressure to bear near the orifice in the sand, a little fountain of water spurted into the air—shot as though from a fairy gun buried in the sand.

“Goodness!” gasped Dot again. “What _is_ that?”

“That’s what I say,” responded Tess. “Did you ever see the like?”

“Oh! here’s another,” cried Dorothy, who chanced to step near a similar vent. “See it squirt, Tess! See it squirt!”

“What kind of a creature do you suppose can be down there?” asked the bigger girl.

“It—it can’t be anything very big,” suggested Dot. “At least, it must be awfully narrow to get down through the little hole, and pull itself ’way out of sight.”

This suggestion certainly opened a puzzling vista of possibilities to the minds of both inland-bred girls. What sort of an animal could possibly crawl into such a small aperture—and yet throw such a comparatively powerful stream of water into the air?

They found several more of the little air-holes. Whenever they stamped upon the sand beside one, up would spring the fountain!

“Just like the books say a whale squirts water through its nose,” declared Tess, who had rather a rough-and-ready knowledge of some facts of natural history.

A man with a basket on his arm and a four-pronged, short-handled rake in his hand, was working his way across the flats; sometimes stooping and digging quickly with his rake, when he would pick something up and toss it into his basket.

He drew near to two Corner House girls, and Dot whispered to Tess:

“Do you suppose he’d know what these holes are for? You ask him, Tess.”

“And he’s digging out something, himself. Do you suppose he’s collecting clams? Ruth says clams grow here on the shore and folks dig them,” Tess replied.

“Let’s ask about the holes,” determined Dot, who was persistent whether the cause was good or bad.

The two girls approached the clam-digger, hand in hand. Dot hugged tight in the crook of one arm her Alice-doll.

“Please, sir,” Tess ventured, “will you tell us what grows down under this sand and squirts water up at us through such a teeny, weeny hole?”

The man was a very weather-beaten looking person, with his shirt open at the neck displaying a brawny chest. He smiled down upon the girls.

“How’s that, shipmet?” he asked, in a very husky voice. “Show me them same holes.”

The sisters led the way, and the very saltish man followed. It was not until then that Tess and Dot noticed that one of his legs was of wood, and he stumped along in a most awkward manner.

“Hel-_lo_!” growled the man, seeing the apertures in the sand. “Them’s clams, an’ jest what I’m arter. By your lief——”

He struck the rake down into the sand just beyond one of the holes and dug quickly for half a minute. Then he tossed out of the hole he had dug a nice, fat clam.

“There he be, shipmets,” declared the clam-digger, who probably had a habit of addressing everybody as “shipmate.”

“Oh—but—did _he_ squirt the water up at us, sir?” gasped Dot.

The wooden-legged man grinned again and seized the clam between a firm finger and thumb. When he pinched it, the bivalve squirted through its snout a fine spray.

“Oh, mercy!” exclaimed Tess, drawing back.

“But—but _how_ did he get down into the sand and only leave such a tiny hole behind him?” demanded Dot, bent upon getting information.

“Ah, shipmet! there ye have it. I ain’t a l’arned man. I ain’t never been to school. I went ter sea all my days till I got this here leg shot off me and had to take to wearin’ a timber-toe. I couldn’t tell ye, shipmets, how a clam does go down his hole an’ yet pulls the hole down arter him.”

“Oh!” sighed Dot, disappointedly.

“It’s one o’ them wonders of natur’ ye hear tell on. I never could understand it myself—like some ignerant landlubbers believin’ the world is flat! I know it’s round, ’cos I been down one side o’ it an’ come up the other!

“As for science, an’ them things, shipmets, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout ’em. I digs clams; I don’t pester none erbout how they grows——”

And he promptly dug another and then a third. The girls watched him, fascinated at his skill. Nor did the “peg-leg” seem to trouble him at all in his work.

“Please, sir,” asked Tess, after some moments, “how did you come to lose your leg—your really truly one, I mean?”

“Pi-_rats_,” declared the man, with an unmoved countenance. “Pi-_rats_, shipmet—on the Spanish Main.”

“Oh!” breathed both girls together. Somehow that expression was faintly reminiscent to them. Agnes had a book about pirates, and she had read out loud in the evenings at the sitting-room table, at the old Corner House. Tess and Dot were not aware that “the Spanish Main” had been cleared of pirates, some years before this husky-voiced old clam-digger was born.

The clam-digger offered no details about his loss, and Tess and Dot felt some delicacy about asking further questions. Besides, Tom Jonah came along just then and evinced some distaste for the company of the roughly dressed one-legged man. Of course, he could not dig clams in his best clothes, as Tess pointed out; but Tom Jonah had confirmed doubts about all ill-dressed people. So the girls accompanied the dog back towards the tents.

The big girls had been out in the boat and Ruth had left Agnes to bring up the oars and crab nets, as well as to moor the boat, while she hastened to get dinner.

The tide being on the turn they could not very well pull the boat up to the mooring post; but there was a long painter by which it could be tied to the post. Agnes, however, carried the oars up to the tent and then forgot about the rest of her task as she dipped into a new book.

Tess and Dot came to the empty boat and at once climbed in. Tom Jonah objected at first. He ran about on the sand—even plunged into the water a bit, and put both front paws on the gunwale.

If ever a dog said, “Please, _please_, little mistresses, get out of the boat!” old Tom Jonah said it!

But the younger Corner House girls paid no attention to him. They went out to the stern, which was in quite deep water, and began clawing overboard with the crab nets. With a whine, the dog leaped into the craft.

Now, whether the jar the dog gave it as he jumped into the boat, or his weight when he joined the girls in the stern, set the cedar boat afloat, will never be known. However, it slid into the water and floated free.

“We can catch some crabs, too, maybe, Tess,” Dot said.

Neither of them noticed that the oars were gone, but had they been in the boat, Tess or Dot could not have used them—much. And surely Tom Jonah could not row.

They did not even notice that they were afloat until the tide, which was just at the turn, twisted the boat’s nose about and they began drifting up the river.

“Oh, my, Dot!” gasped Tess. “Where are we going?”

“Oh-oo-ee!” squealed Dot, raking wildly with one of the nets. “I almost caught one.”

“But we’re adrift, Dot!” cried Tess.

The younger girl was not so much impressed at first. “Oh, I guess they’ll come for us,” she said.

“But Ruth and Aggie can’t reach us—’nless they swim.”

“Won’t we float ashore again? We floated out here,” said Dot.

She refused to be frightened, and Tess bethought her that she had no right to let her little sister be disturbed too much. She was old enough herself, however, to see that there was peril in this involuntary voyage. The tide was coming in strongly and the boat was quickly passing the bend. Before either Tess or Dot thought to cry out for help, they were out of sight of the camp and there was nobody to whom to call.

Tom Jonah had crouched down in the stern, with his head on his paws. He felt that he had done his duty. He had not allowed the two small girls to go without him on this voyage. He was with them; what harm could befall?

“I—I guess Alice would like to go ashore, Tess,” hesitated Dot, at last, having seized her doll and sat down upon one of the seats. The boat was jumping a good deal as the little waves slapped her, first on one side and then on the other. Without anybody steering she made a hard passage of it.

“I’d like to get ashore myself, child,” snapped Tess. “But I don’t see how we are going to do it.”

“Oh, Tess! are we going to be carried ’way out to sea?”

“Don’t be a goosey! We’re going _up_ the river, not _down_,” said the more observant Tess.

“Well, then!” sighed Dot, relieved. “It isn’t so bad, is it? Of course, we’ll stop somewhere.”

“But it will soon be dinnertime,” said her sister. “And I guess Ruth and Aggie won’t know where we’ve gone to.”

In fact, nobody about the tent colony had noticed the cedar boat floating away with the two girls in it—to say nothing of the dog!

##