“We might wait till the wind lulls,” he argued.
“Yes, and if the wind should change she might drag her anchor and go out to sea. Which boat is best to take, Peterson?”
A strange feeling of calm came over me, an odd feeling not easy to explain, that I was not a young man of leisure, but some one else, one of my ancestors of earlier days, used to encounters with adversity or risk. Calmly and much to my own surprise, I stood and estimated the chances as though I had been used to such things all my life.
“Which is the best boat, Peterson?” I repeated. “Hardly the duck boat, I think—and you say not the big boat.”
“The dingey is the safest,” replied Peterson. “That little tub would ride better; but no man could handle her out there.”
“Very well,” said I; “she’ll get her second wetting, anyhow. Lend a hand.”
“She’ll carry us both,” commented the old man, stepping to the side of the stubby little craft.
“But she’ll be lighter and ride easier with but one,” was my reply. “A chip is dry on top only as long as it’s a chip.”
“Let me go along,” said Jean Lafitte, stepping up at this time.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, my son,” said I. “Go back to the ladies and make a fire, and make a shelter,” said I. “I’ll be here again before long.”