details of the
_Barracouta's_ engine. The others also showed themselves apt pupils.

At half past seven the high cliffs of Seal Island lay to the north.
Passing for a mile along its rocky shores, they kept on toward
Matinicus, now rising into view. Jim pointed to a breaker a little south
of their course.

"Malcolm's Ledges! A bad bunch of rocks. Years ago a fishing-schooner
struck there in the night. Crew thought at first they'd reached safety,
but they soon found it was only a half-tide ledge. The vessel heaved
over it when the water rose, and sunk, so that only her topmast stuck
out. One man, the sole survivor, hung to that. He was taken off in the
morning, but his arm was worn almost to the bone by the swaying of the
mast."

Farther on they passed the long, treeless, granite hump of Wooden Ball,
with its few lobstering-shacks, and sheep grazing in its grassy valleys.
Ledge after ledge went by, until at last they entered the little rocky
haven of Matinicus, crammed with moored sloops and power-boats, and ran
in beside the high, granite fish-pier at its head.

Percy found everything new and strange--the stilted wharves on the
ledges, heaped with lobster-traps and festooned with buoys of all shapes
and colors; the fish-pier with its open shed, sheltering the dark,
discolored hogsheads rounded up with salted fish; the men in oilskin
"petticoats," busy with splitting-knives on hake and cod and pollock and
haddock, brought in by the noisy power-boats; the lighthouse-keepers
from Matinicus Rock, five miles south, in military caps, oilskins, and
red rubber boots, towing a dory to be dumped full of slimy hake heads
for lobster bait; the post-office and general store above the cove, and
the spruce-crowned rocks beyond it.

[Illustration: THE CAMP AT SPROWL'S COVE]

Jim pointed out a bronze tablet on a slanting ledge.

"In memory of Ebenezer Hall, first English settler on Matinicus. He
lived with his family in a log house at the head of this cove. In 1757
some Indians were camped on one of the Green Islands, six miles or so
northwest, living on the eggs of seabirds. Hall went over to the island
one day and set fire to the grass, destroying the nests and eggs. Next
morning five Indians in two canoes came over to Matinicus to take
revenge. They landed on this beach, built a fire, and began cooking
their breakfast. Hall had barricaded himself indoors, but he could put
his head up through a little lookout in the top of his