"Did I say 'em all right, Cap'n Dab?" anxiously inquired Dick, with a happy look on his black, merry face.
"Every word," said Dab. "Well for you they were all short. Keep on practicing."
Practicing? Yes, that was it, and Dick himself joined heartily in the peal of laughter with which the success of his first attempt at "white folk's English" was received by the party. Dab explained that as soon as Dick found he was really to go to the academy he determined to teach his tongue new habits, and the whole company heartily approved, even while they joined Dab in advising him not to try too much at a time.
Plenty of talk and fun all around as the "Swallow" skimmed onward, and the long, low outlines of the narrow sand-island were rapidly becoming more distinct.
"Is that a light-house?" asked Annie of Dab.
"Yes, and there's a wrecking station close by."
"Men there all the while? Are there many wrecks on this coast?"
"Ever so many, and there used to be more of them. It was a bad place to run ashore, in those days. Almost as bad as Jersey."
"Because of the wreckers. The shore's bad enough, and the bar's a mean place to escape on, but the wreckers used to make it worse."
And Dab launched out into a slightly exaggerated description of the terrors of the Long Island coast in old times and new, and of the character of the men who were formerly the first to find out if anything or anybody had gone ashore.
"What a prize that French steamer would have been!" said Annie, "the one you took Frank Harley from."
"No, she wouldn't. Why, she wasn't wrecked at all. She only stuck her nose in the sand and lay still till the tugs pulled her off. That isn't a wreck. A wreck is where the ship is knocked to pieces and people are drowned, and all that sort of thing. Then the wreckers have a notion that everything that comes ashore belongs to them. Why, I've heard even some of our old fishermen--best kind of men, too--talk of how government has robbed 'em of their rights."
"By having wrecks prevented, and saving the property for the owners."
"Isn't that strange! Did you say they were good men?"
"Some of 'em. Honest as the day is long about everything else. But they weren't all so. There was old Peter, and he lives on the Island yet. There's his cabin now. You can just see it in the edge of that great sand-hill."