Now that we were in the home State, we got out our guns and hugged the
shore closely, on the lookout for plover. We drifted sometimes, while we
studied our maps for the location of the salt marshes. If we were lucky,
we had broiled birds for luncheon or supper; if we were not, we had tinned
stuff, which is distinctly inferior. When we spent the night at an inn, we
breakfasted there, but most of our meals were eaten along the shore, or,
best of all, on some island.

"Can we find an island for lunch to-day, do you suppose?" I usually asked,
as we dipped our oars in the morning.

"Do you have to have an island for lunch?"

"I love an island!" choosing to ignore the jest. "That's one of the best
things about a boat--that it takes you to islands."

"Now, why an island?"

"You know as well as I do. An island means--oh, it means remoteness, it
means quiet--possession; while you're on it, it's yours--you don't have
every passer-by looking over your shoulder--you have a little world all to
yourself."

I could feel Jonathan's indulgent smile through the back of his head as he
rowed.

"Well, you know yourself," I argued. "Even a tiny bit of stone and earth,
with moss on it, and a flower, out in the middle of a brook, looks
different, somehow, from the same things on the bank. It _is_
different--it's an island."

And so we sought islands--sometimes little ones, all rocks, too little even
to have collected driftwood for a fire, too little to have grown anything
but wisps of beach-grass, low enough to be covered, perhaps, by the
highest tides. Sometimes it was a larger island, big enough to have bushes
on it, and beaches round its edges. One of these we remember as best of
all. It lay a mile off shore, a long island, rocky at its ocean end and at
its land end running out to a long slim line of curving beach. In the
middle it rose to a plateau, thick-set with grass and goldenrod and bay
bushes, from which floated the gay, sweet voices of song sparrows. Ah!
There was an island for you! And we made a fire of driftwood, and cooked
our luncheon, and lay back on the sand and drowsed, while the sea-gulls,
millions of them, circled curiously over our heads, mewing and screaming
as they dived and swooped, and behind us the notes of the song sparrows
rose sweet.

If we had had water enough in our jug, we should have camped there. We
rowed away at last, slowly, loving it, and in our thoughts we still
possess it. As it dropped aster