board but a few moments, then climbed down. A bit of colour caught their eyes—a gay-coloured dress. A woman's laugh floated on the morning breeze.
"Um—things are beginning to happen," muttered Ben. "I'm here for over a year without a living soul to speak to. Then in two days folks come sailing here like miners in a gold rush. We'll have a nice young city here soon."
The boat was beached and the Captain hailed them.
"Morning, Captain," called Ben, "where does she hail from?"
"New York, they say," replied the Captain, slowly filling his pipe from his oilskin pouch. "I can't make her out—there's something funny. She's called the Alice, and flies a New York Yacht Club pennant. Looks as if her name had been tampered with."
"What sort of a crew has she?"
"A pretty tough-looking lot. All I saw was a sailor with a grouch, a man who looks like a prize fighter, with an odd scar slashed across his face—like a streak of lightning—and a bell-button in his forehead." Then he smiled. "There's a woman aboard, too. Pretty fresh. Wears a sort of theatre petticoat and looks as if she were lost, strayed or stolen from some show-troupe."
The girl's curiosity rose to the boiling point.
"What did she say, Uncle Harve?"
The skipper laughed at this.
"Well—more than her prayers. When I came over the taffrail she hailed me with, 'Look who's here? If it ain't Old Cap from Way Down East, salt on his whiskers, honest 'n
