Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“ Griffon joined him there; whereupon Penny reached over and brought the light, hinged door of wicker work and woven grass into place above their bowed heads.
Sailor Penny had an extraordinary establishment underground, which he shared with an extraordinary company. Here was a cave in the living rock older than humanity and almost as crooked as the ways of Caleb Stave, with a seaweed vent halfway up the face of the seventy-foot cliff. ”

“ Midway the reef, where it was highest and widest, squatted a fragment of an old hulk—twenty feet or so of stove keel, unplanked ribs crusted with shells and weeds, a ragged butt of bowsprit and a stump of foremast.
"It be a proper island at neap, an' no more nor a strip at full an' all a-wash at flood," said Penny. "I've set here many's the time for hours o' moonlit nights picturin' Caleb Stave on that there reef without boat nor raft to bring 'im off."
"You have?" queried Griffon, surprised. "So you know him, too?" ”

“ If he sights a stranger, up he climbs into the highest o' the right trees, up to the angle for a glimpse o' this here pewter dish, an' takes a shoot at it. Maybe two o' us be settin' here in the cool—or three, maybe—when ping goes the pewter dish, an' down we goes underground, leavin' nothink for a stranger to see save this here old shelter what a shipwrecked sailor might rig an' sleep under a night or two."
Griffon was impressed and puzzled. ”