“Yes, she is going well,” Tom Burdett said when he expressed his satisfaction; “but if the wind was to get up a bit more it would be just the other way. We have got quite as much as we want, while they could stand a good bit more. A small craft will generally hold her own in a light wind, because why, she carries more sail in proportion to her tonnage. When the big ship has got as much as she can do with, the little one has to reef down and half her sails are taken off her. Another thing is, the waves knock the way out of a small craft, while the weight of a big one takes her through them without feeling it. Still I don’t say the boat ain’t doing well, for she is first-rate, and we shall make a very quick passage to port.”
Running up the pretty river, they rounded to, head to wind, dropped the anchor a short distance from a ship of war, and lowered and stowed their sails smartly. Then Horace went below to dinner. It had been ready for some little time, but he had not liked leaving the deck, for rolling, as she sometimes did, it would have been impossible to eat comfortably. As soon as he dined, the others took their meal in the fo’castle, Marco having insisted on waiting on him while at his dinner. When they had finished, Marco and Dick rowed Horace ashore. The lad took the boat back to the yacht, while the other two strolled about the town for a couple of hours, and then went off again.
The next day the Surf fully satisfied her skipper as to her weatherly qualities. The wind was, as he had predicted, nearly south-east, and there was a good deal of sea on. Before getting up anchor, the topmast was lowered, two reefs put in the main-sail and one in the mizzen, and a small jib substituted for that carried on the previous day. Showers of spray fell on the deck as they put out from the mouth of the river; but once fairly away she took the waves easily, and though sometimes a few buckets of water tumbled over her bows and swashed along the lee channels, nothing like a green sea came on board. Tom Burdett was delighted with her.
“She is a beauty and no mistake,” he said enthusiastically. “There is many a big ship will be making bad weather of it to-day; she goes over it like a duck. After this, Mr. Horace, I sha’n’t mind what weather I am out in her. I would not have believed a craft her size would have behaved so well in a tumble like this. You see this is more trying for her than a big sea would be. She would take it easier if the waves were longer, and she had more time to take them one after the other. That is why you hear of boats living in a sea that has beaten the life out of a ship. A long craft does not feel a short choppy sea that a small one would be putting her head into every wave: but in a long sea the little one has the advantage. What do you think of her, sir?”
“She seems to me to heel over a long way, Tom.”
“Yes, she is well over; but you see, even in the puffs she doesn’t go any further. Every vessel has got what you may call her bearing. It mayn’t take much to get her over to that; but when she is there it takes a wonderful lot to bring her any further. You see there is a lot of sail we could take off her yet, if the wind were to freshen. We could get in another reef in the main-sail, and stow her mizzen and foresail altogether. She would stand pretty nigh a hurricane with that canvas.”
It was four o’clock in the afternoon before the Surf entered the harbour. Horace was drenched with spray, and felt almost worn out after the struggle with the wind and waves; when he landed his knees were strangely weak, but he felt an immense satisfaction with the trip, and believed implicitly Tom Burdett’s assertion that the yacht could stand any weather.