"What was the boat's name?" you may feel like interrupting me to ask.
It had not been christened yet, but when, as they sat by the fire on Sunday evening, Katy read aloud the story of "Red Erik," they all agreed that that was the name they wanted.
Now the Red Erik was fitted to carry one mast, which passed through a hole in the forward thwart, and was stepped into a block underneath. The sail carried by this mast was a square sail of pretty good size, supported by a gaff at the top and a boom at the bottom. When it was not in use it was rolled around the mast, the gaff and boom being laid lengthwise along with it; and by wrapping the sheet around, the whole was lashed into a bundle, which lay very snugly upon the thwarts under one gunwale, where a couple of leather gaskets were buckled about it to keep it from sliding. There was also a jib-sail.
While they were overhauling this gear, the question of what they were to do for a tent came up, and Katy asked whether the sails could not be made useful for that purpose.
Certainly, the mainsail was large enough to form a very decent shelter when stretched over a low ridge-pole, but it needed loops of rope at the ends in order to be pegged to the ground and thus held in place.
"But there ain't any ground, and you can't drive wooden pegs into ice," objected Katy, at this point of the planning.
"Then," said Aleck, "we shall have to get half a dozen iron pegs, and I have some railway spikes that will be just the thing."
"That's so," said Tug. "Take 'em along. Now, the next thing is poles. The gaff will do for one, but the other one we'll have to make, because we want to use the boom for a ridge-pole."
"Then I'll tell you how we'll fix it," Aleck explained. "We'll put an eye-bolt in the far end of the boom, and call that the front end of the tent. We'll make a front upright post out of hickory, and have the lower end of it shod with iron, so as to stick in the ice—"