Not a sound except the hiss and splash of the surf, which, because of a week of calms and light winds, was low even for that time of year--early June.
To the north stretched the shores of the back of the Cape.

High clay bluffs, rain-washed and wrinkled, sloping sharply to the white sand of the beach a hundred feet below.

Only one building, except those connected with the lighthouses, near at hand, this a small, gray-shingled bungalow about two hundred yards away, separated from the lights by the narrow stream called Clam Creek--Seth always spoke of it as the "Crick"-- which, turning in behind the long surf-beaten sandspit known, for some forgotten reason, as "Black Man's Point," continued to the salt-water pond which was named "The Cove." A path led down from the lighthouses to a bend in the "Crick," and there, on a small wharf, was a shanty where Seth kept his spare lobster and eel-pots, dory sails, nets, and the like.

The dory itself, with the oars in her, was moored in the cove.
A mile off, to the south, the line of bluffs was broken by another inlet, the entrance to Pounddug Slough.

This poetically named channel twisted and wound tortuously inland through salt marshes and between mudbanks, widening at last to become Eastboro Back Harbor, a good-sized body of water, with the village of Eastboro at its upper end.