Swept Out to Sea; Or, Clint Webb Among the Whalers

E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

COPYRIGHT 1913 BY M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
Swept Out to Sea or Clint Webb Among the Whalers

Chapter I
In Which My Cousin and I have a Serious Falling Out
The wind had died to just a breath, barely filling the canvas of the Wavecrest . We were slowly making the mouth of the inlet at Bolderhead after a day’s fishing. Occasionally as the fitful breeze swooped down the sloop made a pretty little run, then she’d sulk, with the sail flapping, till another puff came. I lay in the stern with my hand on the tiller, half asleep, while Paul Downes, my cousin, was stretched forward of the mast, wholly in dreamland. A little roll of the sloop as she tacked, almost threw him into the water and he awoke with a snarl and sat up.
“For goodness sake! aren’t we in yet?” he demanded, crossly. “What you been doing for the last hour Clint Webb? We’re no nearer the inlet now than we were then, I swear!”
That was a peculiarity about Paul. He was addicted to laying the faults of even inanimate objects to the charge of other people; and as for himself personally, he was never in the wrong! Now he felt that he must have somebody on whom to vent his vexation—and hunger; I was used to being that scapegoat, and it was seldom that I paid much attention to his snarling. On this particular occasion, I said, calmly:
“Now, Paul, you know very well that I hold no position with the Meteorological Bureau, and therefore you shouldn’t lay the sins of the weather to me.”
“Huh! ain’t you smart?” he grunted.