Chapter III The Catboat in the Squall
“If we had some more fellows here,” Kirby said as he stopped another of Pence’s hot ones, Pudge having swung at it with a ferocious grunt, “we might at least get up a decent game of two-old-cat. But Joe’s struck; says he won’t chase any more balls. And Pudge and Ben want to bat all the time.”
Idleness was beginning to wear on the party of campers. Horace Pence was satisfied to exercise his pitching arm a little every day. They had plenty to eat, and nobody seemed to care much for fishing. If idleness can be condoned, it is not in camp—that is one sure thing. Something doing all the time is the only way to spend a pleasant vacation. One kind of work offsets another. If the mind goes stale, rest it by vigorously using the body; if the latter is overworked, nothing so quickly and easily aids in resting it as mental exercise.
These boys in camp on Storm Island were using neither their minds nor their muscles sufficiently. They were not happy. The days already began to seem too long, although they had not been in camp a week. They were becoming more and more quarrelsome. Instead of enjoying their vacation, they were likely to be bored to distinction very shortly.
Pudge threw away his bat. Horace came in from the mound and seated himself with the others upon the turf under a spreading tree.
“We ought to do something,” complained Kirby.
“You’ll have a chance shortly,” drawled Horace Pence, squinting skyward. “A home run for the tents. It’s going to rain.”
“Those are thunder-heads all right,” Ben admitted.
“Let’s go over to t’other side of the island. Can see the storm roll up. She’s coming from seaward,” proposed Kirby.
“Let ’er come,” grunted Pudge.
“I’ve seen a thunder storm before,” stated Ben, without moving.
“Never on Storm Island,” snapped Kirby. He was fretful from lack of occupation. But it was not until Horace stood up that Harry moved. “What, ho?” he cried.
“Good idea,” said the languid Horace. “I never saw a tempest at sea.”
“Then you’re going to improve your mind?” asked Pudge.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“My mind doesn’t need improving,” announced the fat youth, lolling back again and pulling the cap over his eyes.
As Pudge stretched out his short legs more comfortably, Horace and Kirby passed, one on either side of him. At a given signal from the former, they stopped, each seizing one of the fat youth’s ankles. They started off at a trot, dragging Pudge with them over the smoothly slipping pine needles that covered the ground.
“Leggo! Stop it!” bawled Pudge as his coat crawled up his back and he lost his cap and a suspender button in his struggles. He flopped about like a sea turtle turned on its upper shell—and just as gracefully—to the delight of Ben Comas who followed, kicking his cousin’s cap.
“You’d oughtn’t to complain, Pudge,” Ben said. “You’re going without any exertion on your part.”
“Hey! Quit, you fellers!” cried the fat lad. “What d’ye think I am? There goes another of my suspender buttons. Ouch! stop it——”
He managed to kick free of Kirby’s hold, and the laughing Pence had to release the fat boy’s other ankle to save himself from being kicked. Pudge scrambled up, breathing dire threatenings.
“How’d you think I’m going to hold up my pants—two buttons busted off?” he grumbled. “And they’re lost, too.”
“Use a belt, like a normal human being, son,” advised the much amused Pence.
“Huh!” Pudge responded, patting his protuberant waistline ruefully. “I don’t like a belt. ’Tain’t comferble. Ow!”
A startling clap of thunder broke directly over their heads. A chill breath of air swept through the aisles of the wood.
“We’re going to get wet,” sang out Ben.
“Well, we’re neither sugar nor salt. We won’t melt,” Kirby returned. “There’s the sea. My! Get onto the whitecaps, boys!”
A vivid flash of lightning stained the slate-colored horizon. Again the thunder broke and rolled away in reverberating echoes. The sky was completely overcast on the seaward side of the island, and the clouds were now rolling up to the zenith. The sun was wiped out, while the wind soughed in the treetops.
“My!” murmured Pudge, having recovered his cap and his good temper. “Going to be some storm.”
It was Pence who spied the catboat. Not a sail nor a smudge of smoke betrayed the presence of any larger vessel upon the skyline; but close in under the island—so close that it seemed Horace might have thrown the ball in his hand into her cockpit—sailed a catrigged boat, perhaps twenty-four feet long, and broad of beam.
She was just tacking and, as her boom swung heavily to port, the boys on the brink of the wooded cliff noted that there were five figures visible in the boat. They were evidently preparing for the coming squall, although no reef had been as yet taken in the sail.
“Getting into their slickers,” said Harry Kirby. “They’re all young chaps, aren’t they?”
“Don’t see any that look as though they’d voted many times,” drawled Horace.
“See!” cried Pudge. “One’s just a kid—that little feller.”
“There’s one with hair as red as a rheumatic bandage,” chuckled Kirby. “Some hair, that! Now he’s put on his hat and quenched the sunset.”
“How about the fellow steering?” asked Ben. “Hi! There goes his hat.”
The sou’wester the steersman had carelessly clapped upon his head, without fastening the chinstrap, suddenly sailed like a hydroplane over the leaping whitecaps. The wind tossed his blond hair like a girl’s.
“Observe that football mop!” yelled Pudge. “That’s some hirsute adornment, Harry—eh?”
“Look at that sail belly, will you?” Kirby was saying, for he knew something about boat-sailing and was keenly watching the handling of the catboat. “He must be mighty sure of his stick.”
“Got to claw off shore,” Horace said briefly, likewise watching the maneuvering of the craft with interest. “This squall came suddenly when the wind shifted. She’s too close in for comfort.”
“Suppose they’ll be capsized?” asked Ben.
“Wouldn’t want to be in their shoes right now,” grunted Kirby. “There! The wind’s puffing again. This squall is dangerous.”
“Here comes the rain, fellows,” cried Pudge in his high-pitched voice.
The curtain of falling rain swept over the sea, beating down for the moment the jumping waves. It struck the staggering catboat. Through the half-opaque wall of it the watchers on the cliff could still see the tall fellow standing at the tiller, hanging on with both hands.
“Looka that feller!” gasped the excited and admiring Pudge. “Some lad that—what d’ you say, Horrors?”
“He’s no quitter,” admitted the tall lad, his gaze never leaving the chap managing the staggering catboat.
“Shucks!” grunted Ben. “He’s just got to hang on. Who wouldn’t?”
“You!” snapped Kirby like the bark of a spaniel. “You never scarcely smelt salt water before. You don’t know what it means to cling to that kicking tiller!”
“You’ve said it,” rejoined Horace softly.
The curtain of rain lifted a little. The boys in the catboat had managed to reduce sail; but if she lost headway and fell into the trough between two waves, she might wallow over, and turn turtle entirely.
“He’s trying to keep in the shelter of the island, isn’t he?” Pudge asked.
“Trying to wear ’round the easterly point of it. The water’ll be smooth there, and the island will break the force of the wind,” Kirby replied. “Ah! Good for him! ‘Atta boy!”
The fellow with the flying hair had tacked again—a move calling for much judgment and no little courage. When the boom went over it almost carried the craft upon her beam ends.
Her counter rose till the watchers could see the green water wash into the cockpit over the starboard rail.
But she righted, and before the rain-curtain shut down again the spectators saw that the boat was headed right for the sheltered point of the island.
“Say, you fellows,” Ben objected, “this rain is no fun. I’m going to hustle for the camp.”
“Me, too,” agreed his cousin, clutching at the waistband of his trousers. “I wish I could find them buttons.”
“We’ll all go,” Horace Pence said. “That boat will show up in the sound in half an hour—or she won’t show up at all.”
“She won’t be swamped? Not as bad as that?” cried Pudge, somewhat worried.
“She’ll pull through,” said Horace more confidently.
“Of course,” agreed Kirby. “I’d like to see that fellow close to,” with increasing admiration. “The one sailing her I mean. He’s some pilot, all right.”
The heavily falling rain now shut out all view of the staggering catboat. How she fared could not be learned from the point where the quartette stood. They returned through the wood, the rain drumming sharply upon the leaves overhead.