“I want to go for a sail—I mean a spin. Go on, hurry up and get the dinghy down.”
Joe relieved himself of the spar, dropped the gaff by the bait tin, and scratched his head. It was his method of thinking.
Unable to scratch up any formulable objection to the idea of a person taking a fishing yawl out for pleasure and not for fish, yet realising the absurdity of it, he was dumb. Then, with the sculls under his arm, he made for a dinghy beached near the water edge, threw the sculls in, and dragged the little boat down till she was half afloat. The girl got in, and he pushed off.
The Sunfish was the name of the Culpeppers’ yawl, a handy little craft rigged with a Buffalo engine so fixed that one could attend to it and steer at the same time.
“Mind you, and keep clear of the kelp,” said Joe, as the girl stepped from the dinghy to the larger craft, “if you don’t want your propeller tangled up.” He helped her to haul the anchor in, got into the dinghy, and shoved off.
“I’ll be back about eight or nine,” she called after him.
“I’ll be on the lookout for you,” replied he.
Then Miss Culpepper found herself in the delightful position of being absolutely alone and her own mistress, captain and crew of a craft that moved at the turning of a lever, and able to go where she pleased. She had often been out with her father, but never alone like this, and the responsible-irresponsible sensation was a new delight in life which, until now, she had never even imagined.
She started the engine, and the Sunfish began to glide ahead, clearing the fleet of little boats anchored out and rocking them with her wash; then, in a grand curve, she came round the south horn of the bay opening the coast of the island and the southern sea blue as lazulite and speckless to the far horizon.
“This is good,” said Miss Culpepper to herself; “almost as good as being a sea gull.”