Chapter 5

Spring advanced. The velvety grass of the salt meadows became a delightful green. Mermaid of the Lone Cove Station played all day among the dunes and down by the surf, and the men, particularly Ho Ha, played with her. She had a part in their daily drills and exercises. When they wigwagged with red and white flags she wigwagged with a small red and white flag, too. When the little brass cannon was fired and Jim Mapes, standing on a platform that encircled a high pole—a platform that represented the maintop as the pole represented a ship’s mainmast—caught the heaving line and made it fast Mermaid, her hair glinting in the sunlight, stood beside him. The line rigged, Mermaid made the round trip to the dunes and back, and then a last trip to the dunes in the breeches buoy. Her two small legs protruded ridiculously, and the tip of her head was hidden in the big circle of the buoy’s belt. On other days there was drill with the surf boat, but on these occasions Mermaid could only stand on the beach and jump up and down with excitement while her uncles (as she was taught to call them) waded warily out in big hip boots, watched for the right moment, and pushed beyond the breakers. Cap’n Smiley, who was always helping the little girl to invent games, had suggested to her that she play she was on a desert island. He had explained to her what a desert island was, and had made her acquainted, verbally, with one Robinson Crusoe.

She, Mermaid, was a desert islander and the surfboat, returning, was a boat come to take her off. She had been alone, utterly alone, on the desert island for years. At the sight of the boat coming through the surf emotion should be hers. It was, and would have been anyway; but it might never have been the imaginative and kindled thing it became with the keeper’s help. Standing at the tiller he would call out, as the boat turned shoreward:

“Courage! You shall be restored to your family and friends!”

And when the boat was beached he would advance to the child, bow respectfully before her, and even sometimes, kneeling, kiss her hand. He would say:

“Your gracious Majesty, we have voyaged to the Indies and have taken possession of them in the name of Castile!”

Or:

“Welcome, my lady, back to the world of living men!”

Or, merely bowing, and with a deference as studied as Stanley’s in the African jungle:

“Madame Mermaid, I believe!”

Mermaid received him without full comprehension but with high glee. With a deplorable lack of etiquette she invariably reached up both arms, put them around his lowered neck, and kissed him.

She was pretty with the promise of loveliness, perhaps of beauty. It was not only her hair and her eyes but the modelling of her chin and the spacing of her features. The skin was unusually clear, with colour in the cheeks, and a few faint, clustered freckles.