THE SEA GIRL [Illustration: “IF I CAN’T BE A BOY AND GO TO SEA, THE NEXT CHOICE WOULD BE A TERN OR A GREAT GRAY GULL.”] THE SEA GIRL A Tale of Nantucket in the Clipper Ship Days BY MARGUERITE ASPINWALL WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY RALPH D. DUNKELBERGER HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK LONDON ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SEA GIRL Copyright, 1928, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the U. S. A. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TO ALICE LOW SAND who first taught me to know and love Nantucket. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Illustrations “IF I CAN’T BE A BOY AND GO TO SEA, THE NEXT CHOICE WOULD BE A TERN OR A GREAT GRAY GULL.” STILL SINGING, THEY WALKED AND DROVE INTO TOWN “THERE’S THAT NICE YOUNG MAN THE CAPTAIN SENT ASHORE LAST NIGHT TO TELL ME WHAT TIME TO BE AT THE WHARF” “BELAY THERE, YOUNG WOMAN, AND LET US BOTH GET OUR BREATH BACK” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SEA GIRL CHAPTER I Erica Folger sat cross-legged on the flat, railed platform known to Nantucketers as “the walk,” which perched astride the sloping roof of her aunt’s shabby, well-weathered gray house on Orange Street, overlooking the blue waters of the harbor. The water was very blue on that late October day, and the sunshine very clear and golden on the distant commons of the unromantically named “Pest-house Shore” across the harbor, where the brilliant coloring of autumn was already flaming in a riot of orange sedge, and the red and gold and rose of turning huckleberry. The air was full of the clean tang of sea salt and of sweet-fern and bayberry, mixed in a most aromatic fragrance. Erica, busy as she was about a highly reprehensible matter of vast importance to herself, sniffed it appreciatively. Vaguely, half her attention otherwise occupied, she decided, as she always decided each year at this time, that October was the best month of the whole twelve. She loved the snap and vigor of the crisp, sweet air, and the _alive_, ambitious feeling it put into fingers and toes. October smelled of so many interesting things on Nantucket.