The squall had come down so quickly that they were not much to be blamed. It had startled other people on the lake–and those much more used to its vagaries.
In a cove on the north shore a small cat-rigged boat had been drifting since noon-time, its single occupant having found the fishing very good. This fisher was the boatman’s daughter, Polly Jarley.
She had now a splendid catch and she knew that, if the wind held true, a sharp run to the westward would bring her to Braisely Park. At some one of the private landings there her fish would be welcomed–she could get more for them than she could at the Forge, which was nearer.
But the squall gathered so fast that she had to put aside the thought of the run down the lake. The wind would switch about, too, after the squall. That was a foregone conclusion.
She waited until the blow was past and then saw that it would be quite impossible to make the park that afternoon and return to the landing in time for tea. And if she was later her father would be worried.
Mr. Jarley did not like to have his girl go out this way and work all day; but there seemed nothing else to be done this summer. They owed so much at the stores at the Forge; and the principal and interest on the chattel mortgage must be found before New Year or they would lose their fleet of boats. And as yet few campers had come to the lake who wished to hire Mr. Jarley’s boats.
So by fishing (and none of the old fellows who had fished Honotonka for years was wiser about the good fishing places than Polly) the girl added from one to two dollars every favorable day to the family income. Sometimes she was off by light in one boat or another; but she did not often come to this northern side of the lake. This cove was at least ten miles from home.
As the last breath of the squall passed, the wind veered as she had expected, and Polly, having reeled in her two lines and unjointed the bamboo poles, stowed everything neatly, raised the anchor, or kedge, and set a hand’s breadth of the big sail.
The canvas filled, and with the sheet in one hand and the other on the arm of the tiller, the girl steered the catboat out of the cove and into the rumpus kicked up by the passing squall.
The girls of the Go-Ahead Club would surely have been frightened had they been aboard the little Coquette, as the catboat was named. She rocked and jumped, and the spume flew over her gunwale in an intermittent shower. But in this sea, which so easily swamped the canoes, the catboat was as safe as a house.