Page:Barbour--Peggy in the rain.djvu/201



HE Siren lay in Gloucester harbor, anchored in four fathoms off the Field Rocks, with the wooded slopes of Fresh Water Cove rising green to the hot glare of an August sky. Across the blue water lay Ten Pound Island, bare and sun-baked and rock-girdled, the squat lighthouse agleam in the heat. The tide was going out over the bar, past the end of the long, gray breakwater, and as the yacht swung slowly around, the town, wandering helter-skelter over its granite hills, moved into the vision of the two men who, for an hour past, had had the after-deck to themselves.

For three weeks the Siren had sauntered up and 'down the coast from Shelter Island to Eastport. This morning she had come down from Portsmouth. To-morrow she was to make the run across the Bay to Provincetown. Four days later she was due at Newport, where Mrs. Ames was domiciled for the summer in the old-fashioned wooden