Chapter XVI White Wings
With that understanding, the Walcott Hall lads sought their beds that night, and arose betimes in the morning. The sun was scarcely up when they were aboard the catboat and drifted out of the tiny cove in which she had been anchored.
They selected to have breakfast aboard and, as he knew very little about sailing a boat, Cloudman agreed to be the “doctor” during the cruise.
There is no more comfortable, roomy, or safe boat for her size than a cat, and, despite her broad beam, with a stiff breeze blowing, the Spoondrift could walk the water in amazing fashion. Beside, Kingdon was skillful at sailing a craft of her kind.
“How did you learn so much about it, Rex?” asked Peewee Hicks.
“Sailed in pretty near every kind of a one-man or two-man dish all around the seven seas,” declared Kingdon airily. “From a catamaran to an outrigger, or an Esquimaux kaiak, yours truly has tempted Father Neptune.”
“Wish to goodness you’d be really serious once in a while, Rex,” grumbled Midkiff. “Never know whether you’re dreaming or just plain fibbing.”
“There!” ejaculated Red Phillips. “Some rap that, Old Grouch; right in the solar-plexus.”
“But you surely have traveled, Kingdon?” put in Cloudman, who had come up from the low-roofed cabin to breathe.
“That used to be my middle name—before my father settled in Maine for the sake of mother’s health, and went into the lumber game. Rexford Traveler Kingdon—that’s me. Isn’t it perfectly delightful to hear me boast like this? I’m so modest about it, what?”
“There’s another sail over yonder,” cried Peewee suddenly. “Is she heading in, too, Kingdon?”
“She’s making a leg that way,” announced the skipper. “Blackport Channel is narrow, but deep. We’ll have to make about the same number of tacks as she’ll make to get in. Another cat, too; but bigger than the Spoondrift.”
“And a whole lot fancier,” Red Phillips declared.
“See her canvas!” cried Peewee. “White as snow.”
“And this old tub looks like a slop bucket,” complained Midkiff.
“Handsome is as handsome does,” laughed Kingdon. “We know how well the Spoondrift acted the other day in that squall.”
“She certainly spoke her little piece coming up from Boston,” Red admitted.
“That other boat’s going to cross our bow, Kingdon,” Peewee announced excitedly.
“Don’t you believe it, infant,” was the prompt rejoinder.
“But she is, I tell you——”
“Watch out!” called Kingdon. He swung the tiller hard over and the Spoondrift turned almost on her heel. The white spume flew across the decked-over bows into the cockpit, Cloudman getting about half a bucketful down the back of his neck.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled, leaping up.
“Hold on!” advised Red, choked with laughter.
The sail of the Spoondrift caught and held every ounce of wind possible. She was shooting along, splashing through the waves with a lift of her nose that shook her from stem to stern.
“Hold on to what?” cried the Colorado lad, grabbing the edge of the centerboard well. “She’s pitching like a wild bronco!”
“Stick to the saddle,” chuckled Pewee. “You should like this.”
“I do—like fun!” grumbled Cloudman. “Spilled my kettle of hot water. How can I wash greasy pans without hot water?”
“Let ’em stay greasy till the next meal. Then they’re all ready to use again,” Red suggested.
“We ought to have a dog,” Peewee declared.
“What for?”
“Like the lazy woman’s dog. She called it ‘Three Waters’ and when folks asked her if her dishes were washed clean, she always said, ‘Just as clean as Three Waters can make them.’”
“That’s an awful chestnut,” Red said. “We’ll have no such housekeeping as that. Better let ’em stay greasy.”
Meanwhile the Spoondrift was tearing through the jumping waves, with the wind in the most favorable quarter. The strength of the wind was increasing, too, and the Spoondrift was distinctly a heavy-weather craft.
In saving her from being “cross-bowed” by her handsome rival, Kingdon had lost a bit on the length of that leg. Now the Spoondrift rushed down toward the opening of the channel like a steam tug. As the other sailing craft was about to tack, the Walcott Hall boys crossed the stranger’s bows.
So near were the two catboats that a biscuit might have been tossed from one to the other. No biscuits were tossed, but certain chaff was.
“Oh, you lubbers!” shouted a young fellow in a yachting cap, rising upon the forward deck of the strange catboat, and hanging to a stay for support. “Some sailors! Where are you from? What cart is that?”
There seemed to be half a dozen persons aboard the hailing craft, all young fellows. Kingdon answered the laughing challenge:
“Spoondrift, from Storm Island; Kingdon, skipper; bound in. What boat’s that?”
“Nothing To It, Blackport Boat Club. My name’s Yansey. Will see you fellows later. Some tub you got there.”
“Tub!” flung back Peewee. “Like your nerve! We’ve got her entered for the International Cup Races.”
“Sure you have. Tea cup races, you mean,” gibed the other. “Come, now, get that old catamaran out of our way, so we don’t fall over her. We’re going to tack.”
“Look like a lively lot,” Red Phillips remarked as the Spoondrift pulled ahead and got into the choppy channel.
“Blackport Boat Club boys. We ought to know them,” Kingdon agreed. “I understand they’ve set up a fancy eight-oared shell, too. That’s where we are weak, fellows.”
“Where?” Midkiff asked.
“Rowing. Walcott Hall should pull as good an oar as any prep. school in the East. What do we do?”
“It’s what the other schools have always done to us, not what we do,” sighed Red Phillips.
“Why is that?” demanded Cloudman, who knew little about boating of any kind.
“We never seem to develop good rowing material,” Midkiff said.
“Don’t go after it,” Kingdon rejoined, with vigor. “Not as we do after football and baseball timber.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” drawled Peewee. “I’d like to see Old Hall set up a good eight-oared boat—I’d be cox.”
“You’re the right size—below your ears,” said Red.
“If we had a shell,” began Kingdon.
“Where? Here?” Midkiff demanded.
“Yes. Why not? Plenty of quiet water in that sound.”
“But there aren’t eight of us,” squealed Peewee.
“More than eight on the island,” Kingdon returned with a sudden grin.
“Jumping jacks!” Red exclaimed. “He’s raving again. Thinks he can work those loafers over there on Storm Island into rowing material. Going to make a Christy Mathewson out o’ that Horrors kid, too.”
“Like fun he will!” said Cloudman, mockingly.
“What’s the matter—jealous, Eat-’em-alive Jack?” drawled Kingdon. “Don’t be narrow—don’t! If we could put in some practice this summer——”
“Get up a crew and race these Blackport fellows, I suppose?” Midkiff asked, scowling.
“Your supposing is good, Jawn,” observed Kingdom, shifting the tiller just a little so as to ship the cap of a wave that came inboard with a mighty splash and broke up the group of critics forward of the centerboard.
The Spoondrift kept well ahead of the Nothing To It through the channel. It was a fine day, and there were plenty of small sailing craft, as well as motorboats, astir on the ample bosom of Blackport Cove.
To the westward, toward the Beaches, was the anchorage of the Boat Club, where, if any inshore gale did hit them, the small fry would find no rocks to go ashore on.
The Nothing To It wended her way to these moorings; the Spoondrift, with reefed sail, loafed in to a dock near the middle of the water-front.
Rex and Midkiff went up to a machine shop for the new engine parts and needed repairs. On their way back to the dock, the big fellow again tried to reason with his roommate.
“Why not send a letter while we’re here to the Manatee Company, and tell them how the permit was lost?” he begged. “They’d give us another, wouldn’t they? That Enos Quibb will be coming around again—and he isn’t going to be put off so easy a second time. You can see that.”
“Beautiful day, Midkiff,” Kingdon observed, his head in the air.
“Don’t you hear what I say?”
“We’re going to have some job beating back against this wind—if she doesn’t change.”
“Hang it all, Rex! Come on! Take a fool’s advice——”
“No, Jawn; I’m foolish enough myself. Why load up with an overstock of the same goods?”
“Hang it all!” ejaculated Midkiff again.
“Do, Jawn,” Kingdon advised mildly. “Hang it all up—and forget it.”
“You’d try the patience of a saint!”
“Don’t know. Never knew one personally. You don’t claim to have been canonized, do you, Jawn?”
Midkiff flung up his hands and fell silent.