Our craft aground, our prospects of attending church next day vanished. Slowly the tide went down; slowly the moon came up; and Nautica made some candy. By the time it was ready to be put out on the guard to cool, even what little we had found of Powell's Creek had disappeared—all about us was just moonlight and mud. And ahead of us and behind us (sticking down a little way in the mud, but sticking up more in the moonlight) were the two anchors that we had put out to hold us in position when the tide should rise in the night. They looked like great crabs sitting there and watching us.
Of course, sometime in the darkness, Gadabout rose on the flood tide, and perhaps was even ready to cross to the other side of the creek and proceed to church. But nobody else was ready then; and so, finding all asleep, she slowly settled down once more, and we found her in the morning again hard aground. The good minister of Merchants' Hope Church must surely have reached "Seventhly, my brethren," before our houseboat was afloat.
Now, we moved her out in deeper water (for it would not do that she should be aground next day when we ought to be starting for Eppes Creek); and it was gratifying this time when we cast our anchors, to see them go plumping out of sight as anchors should, instead of looking so distressingly unnautical with flukes sticking up in the air.
But mooring a boat (securing her between two anchors, one ahead and one astern) is rather unsatisfactory at the best. Often it is necessary so to hobble your floating home where there is danger of her swinging upon hidden obstructions; but it is hard on the poetry of houseboating. To be held in one position, with unvarying scenes in your windows, is too much like living in a prosaic land home set immovable in sameness.
Your gypsy craft should ride to a single anchor; free to swing to wind and tide in the rhythm of the river. It is of the essence of home life afloat to sit down to dinner heading up-stream, and to rise from table heading down-stream; to open a favourite book with a bit of shore-view in the casement beside you, and to close the chapter with the open river stretching from under your window, your half-drawn shade perhaps cutting the topsail from a distant schooner.
Monday morning dawned bright and fair (as we afterward learned from the sailor); and bright and fair it certainly was when we made its acquaintance. The day was yet young when everything was ready for the trip up the river, and the shores of the little creek were echoing the harsh clicks of our labouring windlass.
"She's hove short, and all ready to start whenever you are, sir," announced the sailor at the bow door.
Nautica snipped a thread and laid down her sewing; the Commodore tossed his magazine aside. A moment more and we were off. When well out in the river, we headed toward the left bank, for we were to make a landing at the pier above Westover to take on two boxes of provisions that had been left there for us by the Pocahontas. The steamer had gone; everybody about the wharf had gone; but we had arranged to have the boxes left out for us, and there they stood on the end of the pier.
Aboard Gadabout was the stir and bustle usually incident to the making of a landing. Clear and sharp rose the voice of the Commodore; now issuing his orders, now taking them back again. When he could think of nothing more to say, he went below and relieved Nautica at the wheel as our good ship swung beautifully in toward the wharf.
It must be remembered that a houseboat does not come up to piers like a steamboat, always finding men waiting to catch lines and to help in making landings. Often, as was the way of it that morning, the wandering houseboat comes along to find only an empty pier; and if she wishes to establish any closer relations with it, she must make all the advances herself.