“But it’s half dead now,” said Marbury. “There’s not much use in putting it back.”
“Yes, there is,” answered Polly, cheerfully. “It will have the fun of telling all the other fish its wonderful adventure, and will die happy. I can see a ridge of land way off there to the west, can’t you?”
“Barnegat, and the Jersey coast, I think,” Marbury told her. “There’s bully yachting all along there, on account of the inlets. I camped out near Cape May one summer with a crowd of boys from the naval ‘Prep.,’ and we had fine fishing and sailing. The beaches are long and shallow. Up in Maine you’ll find them short with plenty of rocks.”
“Short around where the rocks are, you mean,” said Ruth. “There are long, flat reaches of sand up there, too.”
“Anyway, we like rocks,” put in Polly, comfortably. “I don’t think a long, shallow beach is good for yachting. Where are you at low tide? Up in the sand somewhere. And where are you at high tide? Swamped.”
Marbury laughed at her, heartily. He was a tall, stalwart naval cadet of nineteen, with the Senator’s own merry eyes and quick gift of understanding.
“That makes me think of one of father’s stories,” he said. “Uncle Joe, an old darkey down home, used to say he’d a heap rather be killed on land than on water, ‘’case if dey’s an accident on land, why, dar you is, and if dey’s a blow-up in de middle ob de ocean, whar is you?’”
“I don’t care,” persisted Polly, even while she laughed at the story with the others. “Most people are afraid of rocks when they’re boating, but rocks won’t hurt you if you know how to manage them. I’d rather have rocks along shore with some water around them, deep enough to let a three-foot draft boat slip in, than half a mile of wet sand to climb over after you’ve anchored.”
“You won’t get any three-foot draft on a catboat unless your centerboard’s down,” Ted said. “I know because I’ve heard my brothers tell about theirs. It hasn’t any more keel than a washbowl. I like a ‘cat’ myself, because you jam her down against the wind, and lie back and rest. In a yawl or knockabout, you have to change around, and shift about, and fuss every time you tack. I don’t think that’s any fun.”
Polly’s brown eyes sparkled, and she stuck her hands deep in her reefer pockets, and looked out at the wide ocean as if she wanted to clasp hands with it.