eg had his own
necktie wrapped around his head, but several locks of hair had
escaped from under it. He always manages to have something not quite
right about his costumes. He has very nice hair--curly, and quite
amberish colored--but it's not at all like a pirate's. I poked him
from behind to make him hurry, for Jerry was pointing at a big
schooner that was coming down the harbor. We all lay down flat
behind the rock until she had gone slowly around the point. We could
see the sun winking on something that might have been a cannon in
her waist--that's the place where cannon always are--and of course
the captain must have been keeping a sharp lookout landward with his
spy-glass.

"Eh, mon," said Jerry, when the schooner had passed, "but yon was a
verra close thing!"

That's one of the worst things about Jerry,--the way he mixes up
language. We'd been reading "Kidnapped," and I suppose he forgot he
wasn't _Alan_.

"Silence, dog!" I said, to remind him of who we were. "Very like
she's but hove to in the offing, and for aught you know she's maybe
sending ashore the jolly-boat by now."

"Then let's go to the end of the point and have a look," Greg
suggested.

He doesn't often make speeches, because Jerry is apt to pounce on
him and tell him he's "too plain American," but I think it isn't
fair, because he hasn't read as many books as Jerry and I. So I
hurried up and said:

"Bravely spoke, my lad; so we will, my hearty!" And we crawled and
clambered along till we came to the end of the point where it's all
stones and seaweed and big surf sometimes. The surf was not very
high this time,--just waves that went _whoosh_ and then pulled the
pebbles back with a nice scrawpy sound. The schooner was half-way
down to the Headland, not paying any attention to us.

"Ah ha!" Jerry said, "safe once more from an ignominious death. But,
Chris, look at the Sea Monster! What's happened to it?"

The Sea Monster is a bare black rock-island off the end of
Wecanicut. We called it that because it looks like one, and it
hasn't any other name that we know of. We'd always wanted awfully to
go out there and explore it, but the only time we ever asked old
Captain Moss, who has boats for hire, he said, "Thunderin' bad
landin'. Nothin' to see there but a clutter o' gulls' nests," and
went on painting the _Jolly Nancy_, which is his nicest boat.

But the thing that Jerry was pointing out now was very queer indeed.
It was just a little too fa