Usually the girl contented herself with pulling about the harbour, taking her plunge alongside on her return. Sometimes, however, when lying in some wild and picturesque harbour, she would land on the beach to explore or perhaps have a try for snipe with her little 16-bore. Often she gathered wild-flowers for the breakfast table, and taking it altogether, these early morning rambles were the best part of Hermione's day. On this particular occasion, she decided for a stroll along the shore on the eastern side of the bay, and as the place looked promising for birds, she took her gun and a game-bag containing a few cartridges. As she went on deck the quartermaster told her that Captain Heldstrom had gone ashore on some business of the vessel, for Captain Bell had announced that the _Shark_ was in for a couple of weeks continually under way, and it was generally understood that this was a sporting attempt to shake off the Pilot-fish. In fact, bets as to the success of the undertaking were already in process of registry. Olesen helped her into her skiff, and Hermione pulled away in the direction of the beach, reflecting naughtily to herself that since Heldstrom was ashore she might take advantage of the fact to have a look at the salt marsh on the other side of a strip of dwarf pines growing almost to the water's edge. The night before she had observed flocks of snipe and plover circling this marsh, also a bunch of curlew, and being a very good shot, she did not see what was to prevent her from getting a good bag. True, the whole place was preserved by the Shoal Harbour Gun and Fish Club, of which her father was not a member, but to Hermione this fact merely added zest to her expedition. Halfway to the beach she passed within about two hundred yards of the _Daffodil_, at which she looked curiously. Nobody was in sight, and the dinghy was hanging out astern. "Lazy beast!" thought Hermione, with the contempt of the early riser for the sloths who are still in bed. She fetched up at the beach, a good mile from the _Shark_, and leaped ashore, grapnel in one hand and her little double-barrelled gun in the other. The tide was well out, and on reaching a point whence she could look over into the little lagoon, with its encircling strip of marsh, Hermione could see several flocks of plover and big snipe weaving here and there, like motes of dust eddying in the breeze, while their clear whistlings reached her, sharp and sweet in the morning air. She passed quickly over the crest of the beach and hurried toward a point some quarter of a mile distant, where the pine-scrub grew down to skirt the sedge. As the tide was far out, Hermione judged that, in all probability, the sedge was full of feeding birds, so she loaded her gun and started in to beat out the rim of the marsh.