red by tree-covered hills. At the far end of the blue basin
was a break and a gleam of lighter water to show that this was not
really a lake but a stream. There it made the last of its many turnings
and spread its waters in this beautiful harbour before losing them in
the James.

On the hills to our right, houses showed among the trees, some with the
ever-pleasing white-pillared porticoes; and on the hills to our left
was a village that straggled down the slope to the wharf as if coming
to greet the strangers. In this little harbour was quite a fleet,
mostly fishing craft, and all bowing politely on the swell of the tide.

There was such diversity of opinion among our self-constituted pilots
as to the best place for us to drop anchor, that the Commodore turned a
deaf ear to them all and attempted to run alongside a schooner to make
inquiries. She was a good sized craft, and it did not seem as if he
could miss her. He claimed that he did not. He explained that when we
got up there, our ropes fell short and we drifted helplessly past
because the blundering captain of the schooner had anchored her too far
away from us.

Kindly overlooking this error of a fellow navigator, the Commodore
patiently spent considerable of the beautiful summer evening in getting
Gadabout turned around; and then again bore down upon the schooner.
This time her being in the wrong place did not seem to matter; for we
reached her all right, and there probably was no place along that side
where we did not remove more or less paint. The captain of the schooner
gave us the needed information about the harbour; our lines were cast
off, and the houseboat was soon anchored in a snug berth for the night.

Then, sitting upon our canopied upper deck, enjoying the last of our
city melons cooled with the last of our city ice, we looked out over
what we supposed was but the first of many such beautiful creek-harbour
scenes to be found along the river. We did not know that there was to
be no other like Chuckatuck.

After a while, a small steamer came in from the James, a boat plying
regularly between Norfolk and landings along this creek.

It was just the kind of steamer, any one would say, to be running on
the Chuckatuck--a fat, wheezy side-wheeler that came up to its landing
near us with three hearty whistles and such a jovial puffing as seemed
to say, "Now, I'm certainly mighty glad to get back again to you all."
Just the sort of steamer that wouldn't m