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There may be a little rough rubbing now and then from fellows like Dud Fielding; but well, everything that is worth having has its cost. So stand to your colors! Be, as you said yesterday, neither a bully nor a coward, but a man. Now go to see Aunt Winnie and bid her good-bye. Tell her I am sending you off for the jolliest kind of a holiday to Killykinick."
"Is it much further to Killykinick?" asked Dan, who, with shining eyes had been taking in all this novel experience. "Looks like we're heading out to nowhere." The "Sary Ann," with the wind full in her sail, seemed bearing off into sunlit distance, where sky and sea met. There was a faint, shadowy line to the left; and just beyond, a dim pencil point pierced the cloudless blue.
And the voice the song of the sea that had been a very lullaby to Dan as he swung every night in his hammock beneath the stars, had a hoarse, fierce tone, like a sob of passion or pain. Altogether, Dan and his boat had a very hard pull over the three miles to Killykinick. "Thar they come!" said Captain Jeb, who, with Brother Bart, was watching from the beach.
"I am going to have a birthday party next week, and I want you to come, and bring all the other boys from Killykinick. It's the first party I've ever had; but mamma is feeling better this year, and I'll be ten years old, and she's going to have things just lovely for me, music and dancing, and ice-cream made into flowers and birds, and a Jack Horner pie with fine presents in it.
Minnie Foster asked me to come; they've taken a fine house down on the shore, and have all sorts of fun dances, picnics, boat races. I'll get sick of things here pretty soon; won't you, Jim?" "I don't know about that," was the lazy answer. "About as good a place to loaf as you'll find." "Loaf?" put in Dan. "There isn't going to be any loafing at Killykinick for me.
"We're to be off to-morrow," said Brother Bart, a little sadly. "And, though it will be a blessed thing to get back in the holy peace of St. Andrew's, with the boys all safe and sound which is a mercy I couldn't expect, to say nothing of laddie's father being drawn out of his wanderings into the grace of God, I'm sore-hearted at leaving Killykinick.
"More than five and forty years," was the answer, "since the 'Lady Jane' struck the rocks off Killykinick, November 27, 1865. I was second mate to old Captain Kane; and I stood by him until last May, when he took the cruise that every man has to make by himself. And I'm standing by his ship 'cording to orders yet.
Of course I object seriously to fighting, to your reckless venture to Old Top; but well, you had strong temptations, and in vacation time one must not be too severe. At Killykinick there will be more elbow-room. Have you ever been to the seashore?" "Never farther than the wharfs.
They have grown up in softer ways, and are not used to roughing it, as it is likely you will have to rough it at Killykinick. But it will be good for you all, for you all," repeated the speaker cheerily, as he saw in Dan's brightening face the joyful relief the boy did not know how to speak. "And you will come back ready for double 'X' work in the fall. I am looking for great things from you, Dan.
An old man stood in the stern waving a tattered flag that, caught out by the breeze, showed in large faded letters Killykinick. "It's the sign," said Brother Bart gratefully, as he caught sight of the fluttering pennant. "He was to wave the flag to us so we would know the boat.
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