mporary shelter on it for family and flock, while at home the boys,
with the help of a few settlers, had laid the keel and fashioned the
hull of a rude but seaworthy boat, such as the coast fishermen used.

Preparations had been completed the evening before, and now, while Tom
cared for half the flock on the mainland, the father and younger son
were convoying the first load to their new home.

In the day when these events took place, the hundreds of rocky bits of
land that line the Maine coast stood out against the gray sea as bleak
and desolate as at the world's beginning. Some were merely huge
up-ended rocks that rose sheer out of the Atlantic a hundred feet high,
and on whose tops the sea-birds nested by the million. The larger ones,
however, had, through countless ages, accumulated a layer of earth that
covered their gaunt sides except where an occasional naked rib of gray
granite was thrust out. Sparse grass struggled with the junipers for a
foothold along the slopes, and low black firs, whose seed had been
wind-blown or bird-carried from the mainland, climbed the rugged crest
of each island. Few men visited them, and almost none inhabited them.
Since the first long Norse galley swung by to the tune of the singing
rowers, the number of passing ships had increased and their character
had changed, but the isles were rarely touched at except by mishap--a
shipwreck--or a crew in need of water. The Indians, too, left the outer
ones alone, for there was no game to be killed there and the fishing was
no better than in the sheltered inlets.

It was to one of the larger of these islands, twenty miles south of the
Penobscot Settlement and a little to the southwest of Mount Desert, that
a still-favoring wind brought the cumbersome craft near mid-afternoon.
In a long bay that cut deep into the landward shore Amos Swan had found
a pebbly beach a score of yards in length, where a boat could be run in
at any tide. As it was just past the flood, the man and boy had little
difficulty in beaching their vessel far up toward high water-mark. Next,
one by one, the frightened sheep were hoisted over the gunwale into the
shallow water. The old ram, chosen for the first to disembark, quickly
waded out upon dry land, and the others followed as fast as they were
freed, while the collie barked at their heels. The lightened boat was
run higher up the beach, and the man and boy carried load after load of
tools, equipment and provisions up the