The Puritan Twins | Page 4

moment to lose if she hoped to reach the shore in safety, let herself slowly down off the rocks, leaving the basket behind her, and started toward her brother.
The water was already so deep in the channels that their progress toward each other was slow, but they ploughed bravely on, feeling the bottom carefully at each step lest they sink in some sand-pocket or hollow washed out by the tide. Some distance away toward Charlestown a fishing schooner rocked on the deeper water of the bay, and a fisherman in a small boat, attracted by the shouting, looked up, and, seeing the two struggling figures, instantly bent to his oars and started toward them. Though he rowed rapidly, it was some minutes before he could reach the children, who were now floundering about in water nearly up to their necks.
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"Hold fast to my shoulder, Nancy," he heard Dan cry. "I can float, and I can swim a little. Keep thy nose above water and let thy feet go where they will." Nancy, spluttering and gurgling, was trying hard to follow Dan's directions, when the boat shot alongside, and a cheery voice cried, "Ahoy, there! Come aboard, you young porpoises!"
To the children it was like a voice straight from heaven. Dan immediately helped Nancy to get into the boat, and then she balanced it while he climbed aboard.
When they were safely bestowed among the lobster-pots with which the boat was laden, the man leaned on his oars and eyed them critically. "Short of sense, ain't ye?" he remarked genially. "Nigh about drownded that time or I 'm no skipper! If ye ain't bent on destruction ye 'd better get into dry clothes. Ye 're as wet as a mess of drownded kittens. Tell me where you live and I 'll take you home."
He flung a tarpaulin over the shivering figures and tucked it around them as he scolded. "'T is all my fault," sobbed poor Nancy. "Dan came in just to get me out."
"Very commendable of him, I 'm sure," said the stranger, nodding approvingly at Dan, "and just what he 'd ought to do, and doubtless you 're worth saving at that, though a hen-headeder young miss I never see in all my days!"
"She went to find seaweed to bed the clams," explained Dan, coming to his sister's defense, "and the tide caught her. Thou art kind indeed to pick us up, sir."
"Oh," groaned remorseful Nancy, her teeth chattering, "it 's all because I 'm such a sinner! I made a likeness of Gran'ther Wattles in the sand and said dreadful things about the prophet Elijah, or mayhap 't was Elisha, and Dan said a bear might come to eat me up just like the forty and two children, and instead of a bear we both were almost swallowed by the tide!"
"Well, now," said the stranger, comfortingly, "ye see instead of sending bears the Lord sent me along to fish ye out, just the same as He sent the whale to swallow Jonah when he was acting contrary! Looks like He meant to let ye off with a scare this time. Come now, my lass, there 's salt water enough aboard and if ye cry into the boat, ye 'll have to bail her out. Besides," he added whimsically, looking up at the sky, "there 's another squall coming on, and two at a time is too many for any sailor. If I 'm to cast you up on the shore same as the whale, ye 'll have to tell me which way to go, and who ye are."
"Our father is Josiah Pepperell," answered Dan, "and our house is almost a mile back from shore near Cambridge."
"So you 're Josiah Pepperell's children! To be sure, to be sure! Might have known it. Ye do favor him some," said the fisherman. "Well! well! The ways of the Lord are surely past finding out! Why, I knew your father way back in England. He came over here for religion and I came for fish. Not that I ain't a God-fearing man," he added hastily, noticing a look of horror on Nancy's face, "but I ain't so pious as some. I 'm a seafaring man, Captain Sanders of the Lucy Ann, Marblehead. Ye can see her riding at anchor out there in the bay. I have n't set eyes on your father since he left Boston and settled in the back woods up yonder."
He sent the boat flying through the water with swift, sure strokes as he talked, and brought it ashore at the first landing-place they found. Here they drew it up on the bank and, taking out the lobster-pots, turned it upside down so the rain would not fill it. Two great green lobsters with goblin-like eyes were hidden away under