r harbour in Herring Creek, where Gadabout settled
to her moorings as contented as a duck in the marshes.

CHAPTER XX

AN OLD COURTYARD AND A SUN-DIAL

For some time that little anchorage was our watery home acre. We came
to call it our sunrise harbour. The opening where creek and river met
faced to the east; and it was well worth while, if the morning was not
too chill, to have an eye on that opening when the sun came up.
Breaking through the mist veil that hung over the James, he cast a
golden pontoon across the river, and then came over in all his
splendour. He made straight for the mouth of our little creek, flooding
wood and marsh with misty glow, and fairly crowding his glory into the
narrow channel.

One morning, quite in keeping with the splendid burst of dawn, a loud
report rang out over the marshes like the sound of a sunrise gun. But
it was no salute to the orb of day. Somebody was poaching. More shots
followed; and ducks, quacking loudly, fluttered up out of the marshes.
Later, when we were at breakfast, a long rowboat, containing a man and
a pile of brush and doubtless some ducks with the fine flavour of the
forbidden, came out from a break in the marshes and went hurriedly up
the stream.

As we lay in our harbour, we found ourselves almost unconsciously
listening for a sound that seemed to belong to those chill, gray days.
At last, from somewhere high up in the air, it came ringing down to
us--the stirring "honk, honk" of the wild goose. Though our eyes
searched the heavens, we could see nothing of the living wedge of
flight up there that was cleaving its way southward with the speed of
the wind. But we felt the thrill of that wild, stirring cry and were
satisfied.

Whether the geese brought it or not, bad weather came with them. Half a
gale came driving the rain before it down the river. Gadabout lay with
her bulkheads closed tight about her forward cockpit, and must have
looked most dismal. But inside, dry and warm, she was a very cheery
little craft. We listened quite contentedly to the uproar, looking out
from our windows upon windswept marsh and scudding clouds and the fussy
little wavelets of our harbour. It added to our sense of coziness to
look through a stern window out upon the river where the waters piled
and broke white, in their midst an anchored schooner with swaying
masts, tipsy between wind and tide.

One day when the heavens had gone blue again, though tattered clouds
wer