"Fancy! How extraordinary! Oh, there are the frigates!"
For the "Eolus," leaving the wooded, walllike bank of Gould's Island behind, and rounding a point, had now reached the small curving bay to the eastward of Coasters' Harbor, where lay the training-ships, the "New Hampshire" and the "Minnesota." It was a beautiful sight,—the two great war-vessels at anchor, with their tall tapering spars and flying flags reflected in the water on which they floated. Lines of glinting white flashed along the decks; for it was "wash-clay," and the men's clothes were drying in the sun. Two or three barges were disembarking visitors at the gangway ladders, and beyond them a sail-boat was waiting its turn to do the same. On the pier a file of blue-uniformed boys were marching with measured tread. The sound of their feet came across the distance like the regular beat of a machine. A girl in a row-boat was just pushing out from the farther beach, above which rose a stone house covered with vines.
