hore became distorted in the brilliant July sunlight.

"That's the way a good many of us look at things in this life," said
Skipper Ed. "We see the mirage, and not the thing itself. Hopes loom up
and look real, when they're just false. It's a great thing to be able to
tell the differences between what is real and what is just a mirage."

The wind fell away to a dead calm before noon, and though Abel and
Skipper Ed worked at their heavy sculling oars, and Bobby and Jimmy and
Mrs. Abel at the other oars, the boats, laden as they were, and retarded
by the skiffs in tow, made such slow progress that at length they
stopped at a convenient island to boil the kettle and cook their dinner
and wait for a returning breeze.

Dinner was a jolly feast, simple as it was, for in this land folk live
upon simple food and are satisfied with little variety, for their
appetites and desires are not glutted, as ours so often are. And many
things that you and I deem necessary they do not miss, because they have
never had them, and more often than not have never so much as heard of
them. And perhaps it is just as well, and their happiness is just as
complete.

A cod which Bobby caught with his jigger, was boiled in sea water,
because sea water salted it to just the right flavor. This was the first
cod of the season, and the first cod is always a delicacy, and so they
deemed it, together with some of Mrs. Abel's bread, and a pot of tea
sweetened with a drop of molasses.

Then Skipper Ed and Abel shaved tobacco from black plugs, and Skipper Ed
and Abel and Mrs. Abel talked while they waited for the wind to rise
that was to carry them on their journey.

It was a rocky, irregular island upon which they had halted, with rocks
sloping up from the water's edge, and on the top some struggling bunches
of brush. It was not a large island, but nevertheless Bobby and Jimmy
deemed it worthy of exploration, and so, bent upon discovery, they left
their elders to talk, while they wandered about.

"There's a dotar on the shore," exclaimed Bobby, stopping suddenly and
indicating the dark body of a harbor seal sunning itself comfortably
upon the surface of the smooth, flat rocks near water. "Wait here,
Jimmy, till I get my gun and try a shot at him."

And away he ran, presently to return with his gun--the same that Abel
had found in the boat at the time he discovered Bobby. It was
double-barreled, and a shotgun, but now both barrels were loaded with
rou