"Oh, only some old wrecks," replied Gertrude, carelessly; and she turned from Candace to talk to Tom Joy, who sat next to her. The "Cornelia" was now running on the favoring wind between Fort Adams and the Conanicut shore. On one hand lay Newport, which looked like a dream city in the soft shine of the afternoon; on the other was the long hill line of the island, green with grasses, except where broken now and then by rocky cliffs, and indented with innumerable little coves and inlets,--some ending in strips of pebbly beach, others in stony shelves overhung by sea-weeds. The water was beautiful in color,--here pale flashing green, there purple in the shadow, with gleams of golden light and a low reach of shimmering blue toward the horizon. On sped the boat till they could almost touch the ledges. The rounded outline of the old fortification on the upper hill towered above their heads. Then suddenly she curved and wheeled off on the other tack, with the sharp line of Castle Hill and the Agassiz Point full in view. Candace gazed with delighted eyes to left and right. Her mind was full of questions, but there seemed no one of whom she could ask them. Georgie and Berry were perched on the extreme point of the bow, with a young man stretched at their feet. Mrs. Fred was on the cabin roof amidships, with quite a little court of girls and young men about her. The couples who sat opposite and beside her seemed quite absorbed in each other. No one had spoken to Candace since the first introductions, and she was too shy to open a conversation with anybody. "How I wish I knew!" she sighed to herself, half aloud. Looking up, she met the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the Captain. Perhaps he had caught the words, for he asked encouragingly, "Did you speak, Miss?" "No," said Candace, "I don't think I spoke. But I was wondering about that--that--_thing_ up there," pointing to the Fort. "That? That's Fort Dumpling, as folks call it. It is a kind of a queer old place, ain't it? They don't use it now for no war purposes, but it makes a pretty p'int in the landscape, and folks go there for picnics and such in the summer season." "When was it built?" asked Candace, charmed to find somebody able and willing to satisfy her curiosity. "Wa'al, I reckon it was about 1812, when we was a-tackling the British for the last time. 'Tain't very much of a fort to look at; but if you was to mount some of them powerful guns they make now on the walls, them and the others over at Fort Adams yonder would protect the channel pretty well. The shot'd reach clear across. Why, you hardly think it perhaps, but not more'n four or five years ago, there was some folks who had come on a kind of an excursion, taking their lunches up there by Fort Dumpling, and some soldiers was firing at a long-range target over there to Fort Adams, and one of the balls came over and hit a young lady."