It took them but a few minutes to board the Scud and get under way. A rude craft was this yacht which Abner had made with his own hands. She was small and her cock-pit was barely large enough to hold the three men. Here they crowded together and looked ruefully around. They were not accustomed to the water, and when the wind had filled her sail and the yacht began to careen to one side, they almost wished that they had never come. For a while the Scud glided steadily along, being somewhat sheltered by the point. But when once beyond this the full force of the breeze caught the boat, and the spray began to dash aboard. The three passengers clutched hard at the sides of the cock-pit, and looked anxiously around.
"Is this blooming thing safe?" one of the men gasped, when a larger spray than usual flung itself over them.
"Sometimes she is an' sometimes she isn't," was the laconic reply. "Kin yez swim?"
The three men shook their heads.
"That's too bad."
"Why, what do you mean?" Dillman asked. "Do you think she'll upset?"
"Can't say," Abner drawled. "Ye never jist know what queer kinks the Scud'll take. Only last month she played one of her funny pranks, an' upsot right near here with a wind no harder'n this."
"She did!" and the men's faces became suddenly white. "What did you do?" one of them anxiously enquired.
"Oh, jist climbed on her bottom until she drifted ashore. That ain't nuthin' fer me. I'm used to the water, an' could swim all day if I had to."
The man made no reply, but clutched the sides harder than ever as the waves increased.