d the old-fashioned collapsible spyglass, which he favored
rather than the newer binoculars, and started off to "pace the
quarter," as he called the path from the back door to the grassy
cart track which joined the road at the lower corner of the Ball
premises. This highway wandered down from the Head into the fishing
village along the inner beach of Big Wreck Cove. Prudence watched
Ira with fond but comprehending eyes. She saw how broken he was, how
stumbling his feet when he first started off, and the swaying
locomotion that betrayed that feebleness of both brain and body that
can never be denied.

Somewhere on the Head in the old days the wreckers had kept their
outlook for ships in distress. Those harpies of the coast had
fattened on the bones of storm-racked craft. It was one of those
battered freighters that, nearly two centuries before, had been
driven into the cove itself, to become embalmed in Cape history as
"the big wreck."

The Balls and the Lathams, the Honeys and the Coffins of that
ancient day had "wracked" the stranded craft most thoroughly. But
they had not overlooked the salvation of her ship's company of
foreigners. She had been a Portuguese vessel, and although the Cape
Codder, then, as now, was opposed to "foreigners," refuge was
extended to the people saved from the big wreck.

Near the straggling settlement at the cove a group of shacks had
sprung up to shelter the "Portygees" from the stranded-vessel. As
her bones were slowly engulfed in the marching sands, through the
decades that passed, the people who had come ashore from the big
wreck had waxed well to do, bred families of strong, handsome, brown
men and black-eyed, glossy-haired women who flashed their white
teeth in smiles that were almost startling. Now one end of "the
port," as the village of Big Wreck Cove was usually called by the
natives, was known as Portygee Town.

Wreckers' Head boasted of several homes of retired shipmasters and
owners of Cap'n Ira's ilk. These ancient sea dogs, on such a day as
this, were unfailingly found "walking the poop" of their front
yards, or wherever they could take their diurnal exercise,
binoculars or spyglass in hand, their vision more often fixed
seaward than on the land.

Cap'n Ira had scarcely put the glass to his eye for a first squint
at his "position" when he exclaimed:

"I swan! That's a master-pretty sight. I ain't seen a prettier in
many a day. Come here and look at this craft, Prudenc