houseboat had been stopped by the row of pilings. We had practically
circumnavigated the island.

While making Gadabout fast to some convenient pilings, we heard gay
voices and the rumble of wheels on the bridge.

"Look! Look!" cried one of a carriage-full of hatless girls in white
muslins. "There's a houseboat. How in the world did it get in here?"

And we rather wondered ourselves.




CHAPTER V

FANCIES AFLOAT AND RUINS ASHORE


It was midday when we tied Gadabout to the pilings beside the bridge,
and the weather was hot and sultry. So, we deferred until evening the
long walk across the island. But already, sitting under our own awning,
we were in the thick of historic association.

Where our houseboat lay, the early colonists used to find haven for
their vessels, "lashed to one another and moor'd a shore secure from
all Wind and Weather Whatsoever." As they found Back River at this
point so we found it, a stream without banks; instead, on either hand
stretched lonely marshes, jungles of reeds and rushes, now as then more
than man high.