“No, it isn’t,” protested Tom, feeling his seasickness less because of his determination to contest the point. “What is it you’d do? You shall do it anyhow. If you don’t, I’ll jump overboard. I tell you I’m no spoil-sport and I’m no whining baby to be coddled either. Tell me what you had in mind.”
“Oh, it was only a sudden thought, and probably a foolish one. I was seized with an insane desire to give the Hunkydory a fair chance to show what stuff she’s made of by running outside down the coast to the mouth of Stono Inlet, instead of going back and making our way through Wappoo creek.”
“Do it! Do it!” cried Tom, dragging himself up to his former posture. “If you don’t do it I’ll quit the expedition and go home to be put into pinafores again.”
“You’re a brick, Tom, and you shan’t be humiliated. We’ll make the outside trip. It won’t take very long, and maybe you’ll get over the worst of your sickness when we get outside.”
“If I don’t I’ll just grin and bear it,” answered Tom resolutely.
As the boat cleared the harbor and headed south, the sea grew much calmer, though the breeze continued as before. It was the choking of the channel that had made the water so “lumpy” at the harbor’s mouth. Tom was the first to observe the relief, and before the dory slipped into the calm waters of Stono Inlet he had only a trifling nausea to remind him of his suffering.
“This is the fulfillment of prophecy number one,” he said to Cal, while they were yet outside.
“What is?”
“Why this way of getting into Stono Inlet. You said our programme was likely to be ‘changed without notice,’ and this is the first change. You know it’s nearly always so. People very rarely carry out their plans exactly.”