Daddy has always boasted of his perseverance in the pursuit of the unusual in sport.  This time he found it with a vengeance.  Our mate, who hails from these parts, once told him of this place, and implied that the salmon in the little river running down into this cove would take a fly whether awake or asleep, and jostled one another for the privilege.  While Daddy is rather fond of a gun, you and I know that there are only two weapons he is really absorbed in.  I suppose that the first is the instrument he uses to cut off coupons with, and the next is his salmon rod, which I would like to break into little pieces, for it has been the cause of turning our long bowsprit towards this horrid jumble of rock and sea.  I considered that we were lucky to have found our way into Sweetapple Cove without any particular disaster, but of course such luck could not last long.

We ought never to have come any way, for our skipper, the descendant of Vikings, had implied that our schooner was in need of all sorts of repairs, and that sensible people did not start off on long cruises just after months in Florida which had converted the ship’s bottom into a sort of vegetable garden.  Daddy consoled him by telling him he could leave us there and go off to St. John’s to the dry-dock.

You know how pleasantly Daddy speaks to people, and how they detect under his words a firmness which effectively prevents long discussion.  Stefansson is really a racing skipper, but he likes his berth on the Snowbird and said nothing more.  We reached this place where, for lack of level ground, the few houses use all sorts of stilts and crutches, and invaded the village to the intense amazement of the populace and its dogs.

Then came Daddy’s genius for organization.  Within two hours we had rented a little house for next to nothing a week, furnished it in sixty minutes with odds and ends from the yacht, including our little brass bedsteads, which the people here firmly believe to be pure gold, A wild daughter of the Cove, a descendant of the family that gave it its extraordinary name, was engaged as a general servant.  Daddy’s valet and the cook had wept when they saw the place, and Father informed them that they were rubbish and might go back with the Snowbird, which presently sailed off for the scraping it appears to be entitled to.

Daddy at once selected a rod with all the care such affairs of state require, and set forth across the cove with two natives, in a dory.  They went ashore on the banks of the little river and began to clamber over a terrific jumble of rocks.  A salmon was caught so quickly that Father grew boyish with enthusiasm and capered over more rocks.

And then came the accident, Aunt Jennie, and I am still shaky, and tearful, and though I try to write like a normal human being I am desirous of shrieking.  There was just a slip and a fall, and a foot caught between two boulders.  Poor Daddy was dragged from the swift water into which he had been wading and placed in the bottom of the dory, a most damp and smelly ambulance.