"Are those men?--up the masts?" she cried.
She set Prince in motion toward the beach.
At the foot of the bluff the plank road ran out into the deep sand.
Through this the phaeton made its way heavily. The fine particles
were blown in the air like a spray, mingling with the spume from the
lake, stinging Carroll's face like so many needles. Already the
beach was strewn with pieces of wreckage, some of it cast high above
the wash, others still thrown up and sucked back by each wave,
others again rising and falling in the billows. This wreckage
constituted a miscellaneous jumble, although most of it was lumber
from the deck-loads of the vessels. Intermingled with the split and
broken yellow boards were bits of carving and of painted wood.
Carroll saw one piece half buried in the sand which bore in gilt two
huge letters, A R. A little farther, bent and twisted, projected
the ornamental spear which had pointed the way before the steamer's
bow. Portions of the usual miscellaneous freight cargo carried on
every voyage were scattered along the shore--boxes, barrels, and
crates. Five or six men had rolled a whisky barrel beyond the reach
of the water, had broached it, and now were drinking in turn from a
broken and dingy fragment of a beer-schooner.
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