sure of this, because I knew that Father would never have given up
the Sea Monster the night before if he'd had any idea we were there.
But it was so perfectly blessed to have Greg talking sensibly at
all, even with such a wobbly sort of voice, that I didn't much care
what I said.

All at once Jerry came tumbling around the corner, shouting:

"Oh, Chris, come quick! _Hurry!_"

I left Greg and ran after Jerry, and I'd been sitting so long humped
up on the rocks that my knees gave way and I barked my shins against
a sharp ledge. I didn't even know it until ever so long afterwards,
when I found a bruise as big as a saucer and remembered then. Jerry
didn't need to point so wildly out across the water; I saw the boat
before he could say a word. It was a catboat, quite far off, tacking
down from the Headland. The sail was orange, and we'd never seen an
orange sail in our harbor or anywhere, in fact, so we knew it must
be a strange boat.

Jerry pulled off his shirt like winking and stood there in his bare
arms waving it madly. We both began to shout before the catboat
people could possibly have heard us, but we thought that they might
see the white shirt flying up and down. The boat was tacking a long
leg and a short one. The long one carried it so far out that we
thought it was going to cross the mouth of the bay and not come near
enough to see us. Jerry stopped shouting just long enough to gasp:

"When she's all ready to go about on the short tack is the time to
yell loudest."