"Did that schooner skipper eat the shark?" responded Captain Littlefield, his eyes twinkling. "Nop. He'd been too much of a mouthful for the skipper. Nor the shark didn't eat all of that skipper. The skipper dropped his bar and sprung up'ard on a slant, tryin' to go over the head of the shark. "But the tarnal critter whirled over and took a nip at the man as he shot up to the surface. Crunch! Jest one bite was all that was needed. That feller was foreshortened on one side just like 'twas done with a pair o' sheers." "Oh, dear me!" murmured Carolyn May. "What a wicked, wicked shark!" "You'm right, leetle gal," agreed Captain Littlefield. "He was some wicked. He likely swum with a school of other sharks; but 'twarn't no Sunday School," and the sailor chuckled. "If that feller hadn't come right up in the bight of a rope that trailed overboard, he'd never escaped as he did. His mates hauled him in, they trimmed his laig off neater than the shark done it, tied the arteries, an' he got over it. 'Twarn't a method of amputation that the doctors would recommend, I guess. Anyway, that's how come of the way that feller lost his laig." Carolyn was a good deal puzzled as well as interested. "That wasn't you, was it, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield?" she asked. "You didn't have your leg bit off by a shark, did you?" "Oh, bless you, no!" said the captain. "No, indeedy." "Was it your cousin, Mr. Oly Littlefield?" "Oh, no!" again the sailor assured her. "Oly never seen a shark unless it was caught in the pound nets at Dorris Cove. Ah! Well, here we be," he added, turning Worry in at a long lane that wound up between rocky pastures fenced with stone, toward a little house that was set at the very edge of the bank against which the Atlantic surf moaned. "Here's Barzilla Ball's place, and I cal'late that's Molly Icivilla herself out in her bean patch. If your friends--the lady and the baby--can get to stay here, they'll be treated fine, for Molly I. Ball is as good a cook as they make on this island, and she's well tempered." The young woman in the sunbonnet saw the visitors coming, and left her hoe in the garden and came up toward the house. It was a low-roofed cottage with a great chimney in the middle of the roof which itself sloped down almost to the top of the doorframe. The walls were of unhewn stone quarried from the island. The house was evidently very low ceiled, and most of the rooms were on the first floor, which was but a step up from the ground. There was no cellar, and the loft was lighted by one small window in either peak of the end walls. There was a small barn, a shed, a chicken house, and drying racks for fish in the grassy yard. Everything was very clean and neat, the grass was the greenest grass in the world, Carolyn May thought, and the contrast between it and the white-washed buildings was startling.