if any
thing or anybody had been driven ashore.

"What a prize to them that French steamer would have been!" said Annie;
"the one you and Ford took Frank from."

"No, she wouldn't. Why, she wasn't wrecked at all. She only stuck her
nose in the sand, and lay still till the tugs came and pulled her off.
That isn't a wreck. A wreck is where the ship is knocked to pieces, and
people are drowned, and all that sort of thing. The crew can't help
themselves, after that. Then, you see, the wreckers have a notion that
every thing that comes ashore belongs to them. Why, I've heard some of
our old fishermen--best kind of men too--talk of how Government has
robbed them of their rights."

"By the new system?" said Annie.

"Well, first by having wrecks prevented, and then by having all property
kept for the owners."

"Isn't that strange! Did you say they were good men?"

"Some of 'em. Honest as the day is long about every thing else. But they
weren't all so. There was old Peter, now, and he lives on the island
yet. There's his cabin. You can just see it sticking out of the edge of
that big sand-hill."

"What a queer thing it is!"

"Queer? I guess you'd say so, if you could have a look at the things
he's picked up along shore, and stowed inside of it. There isn't but
just room for him to cook and sleep in."

"Is he a fisherman too?"

"Why, that's his trade. Sometimes the storms drift the sand high all
over that cabin, and old Pete has to dig it out again. He gets snowed
under two or three times every winter."

Annie Foster, and probably some of the others, were getting new ideas
concerning the sea-coast and its inhabitants, every minute; and she felt
a good deal like Dick Lee,--she "wouldn't have missed that trip for any
thing."

They were now coasting along the island, at no great distance; and,
although it was not nearly noon, Dabney heard Joe Hart say to his
brother,--

"Never was so hungry in all my life. Glad they did lay in a good stock
of provisions."

"So am I," returned Fuz; and he added in a whisper,

"Isn't there any way for us to get into that cabin?"

Joe shook his head. There was not the slightest chance for any small
piracy to be worked on that craft, so long as Mrs. Kinzer remained the
"stewardess" of it; and the two hungry boys were compelled to wait her
motions.

CHAPTER XX.

A WRECK AND SOME WRECKERS.

Dismally barren and lonesome was that desolate bar between the bay and
the oce