Chapter I: The Elder Twins

Before Beman's Beach had become the popular summer resort which all tourists know to-day, there lived, a little back from the rocky coast which stretches away from it toward the southwest, a farmer named Elder. He had a large family, which consisted mostly of girls; but there were two boys, who were twins.

The boys were called Moke and Poke. These were not their baptismal names, of course. Moke Elder had been christened Moses, and Poke Elder had received at the same time the respectable appellation of Porter--both after their uncle, Mr. Moses Porter, who lived in the family. But they were so seldom called by those names that most people seemed to have forgotten them. Moke was Moke, and Poke was Poke, the world over.

That is to say, _their_ world, which would not have required a tape measure quite twenty-five thousand miles long to go around it. "Frog-End" was the nickname of the part of the town where they lived,--probably on account of a great marsh which was very noisy in spring,--and they were little known beyond its borders.

But everybody about Frog-End and along the coast knew Moke and Poke. That is to say, they were known as twins, if not as individual, separate boys. They looked so much alike, both being thin-faced and tow-headed, and dressed so much alike, often wearing each other's clothes, that he who, meeting one alone, could always say "Moke," or "Poke," as the case might be,--and feel sure he wasn't calling Moke "Poke" or Poke "Moke,"--must have known them very well indeed.

Of course, only a born Frog-Ender could do that. I am not a Frog-Ender myself, and the only way I could ever tell them apart was by looking closely at their moles.

They had two moles between them, exactly alike, except that Moke wore his on the right cheek, quite close to the right nostril, while Poke hung out his sign on the left cheek, at about an equal distance from the left nostril; as if Nature had had just a pair of moles to throw in with their other personal attractions, and had divided her gift in this impartial way.

Even after people had learned these distinguishing marks, however, they could not always remember, at a moment, which had the right mole and which the left; but they would often say "Poke" to the right mole and "Moke" to the left mole, in a manner that appeared very ridiculous to the boys' seven sisters, who couldn't see that they resembled each other at all.

The twins were nearly always together, whether at work or at play; when one was sent on an errand, as a rule both would go, if it was only to get a pound of board-nails or a spool of thread at the village store. They were about the age of their neighbors and playmates, Oliver Burdeen (commonly called Olly), who, when he was at home, lived two farms away from them, and Percival Bucklin (familiarly known as Perce), who lived still nearer, on the other side.

These four boys are the three heroes of our story,--counting the twins as one,--and they come into it on a certain afternoon late in August, just after a great storm had swept over the New England coast.

Uncle Moses Porter--uncle of the twins on the mother's side, an odd and very shabby old bachelor--comes into it at the same time, but doesn't get in very far. It would be hard to make a hero of him. At about four o'clock that day he stood in Mr. Elder's backyard, barefooted and without his hat, watching the clouds and the wooden fish on the barn, and making up his mind about the weather. That was a subject to which he had given the study of a lifetime. He could tell you as many "signs" as there are letters in the alphabet, and spell out to-morrow's weather very exactly with them; that is to say, what it should be, not always what it actually was--Nature sometimes neglecting in the strangest way her own plain rules. A great deal was said about Uncle Moses's occasional lucky hits, and very little about his frequent misses; and he enjoyed a world-wide reputation (the Frog-End world, again) as a weather-prophet, until "Old Probabilities" at Washington took the wind out of his predictions, and drove him, so to speak, out of the business.

But at the time of which I write he was at the pinnacle of his fame, and nobody ventured to doubt his prognostications. If the weather didn't turn out as he predicted, why, so much the worse for the weather!

"Wind has whipped 'round the right way this time, boys!" he remarked, after long and careful observation. "It's got square into the west, and I predict it's a-go'n' to stay there, and give us fair weather, nex' four-'n'-twenty hours. The's no rain in yon clouds; it's all been squeezed out, or else I never saw a flyin' scud afore!"

He paused as if to relax his mind after the severe strain of this prophecy, and smiled as he came toward the woodshed,--where the twins were standing.

"An' I tell ye what, boys! A heap o' that kelp the storm's hove up, are a-go'n' to land, this tide an' tomorrer mornin's, an' you'd better be on hand to git our share on 't."

Of all the farm-work the twins ever tried, they found going for sea-weed the most delightful. There was a relish of adventure in it; and it took them to the beach, which was always a pleasant change for boys brought up on Frog-End rocks. The kelp was usually hauled up from the shore and left to rot in heaps; after which, it became excellent dressing for the land.

There was no good beach very near Mr. Elder's farm, but he had a right on Beman's Beach, two or three miles down the coast.