“Wha’ fo’ yo’ laffin at, boy?” exclaimed Jerry.
“I’m laughing at you, Jerry. I’m onto you. I know about the Anclote Club, and I know some of its members. Tom Allen is my friend.”
The inflated Jerry collapsed like a pricked toy balloon. But he made a feeble stand.
“Ah is de cook,” he blustered.
“I know,” said Bob. “It’s all right. I’m not going to say anything about it. Now tell me about the real club; where it is, and what you do.”
By following the still alarmed Jerry out into the back street to a convenient seat on the curb, Bob coaxed out of him the history of the club a membership in which he was a candidate. By the time Bob rejoined his mother ready for her shopping tour, he was poorer in money by a quarter, but considerably richer in information.
It was tedious work shifting from one foot to another while his mother leisurely looked over organdies and summer silks, and it required the bracing influence of two surreptitious lemon phosphates. At last, about half past ten o’clock, Bob got his mother on a street car and they went to the Long Wharf. It was hot, and, somewhat over her protest, the boy persuaded his parent to accompany him in search of Captain Joe.
The first sight of the Three Sisters schooner, freshly scrubbed and resplendent in its spring coat of green and blue paint, was reward to Mrs. Balfour and Bob for the hot walk on the long, fishy, crowded pier. Captain Joe, pipe in mouth, was lounging on the dock.
The fishing excursion was out of the question, but Mrs. Balfour—somewhat to Bob’s surprise—at once acquiesced in Captain Joe’s proposal that she and her son go for an hour’s sail. The boat was roomy and substantial, and the ease with which the old red-girdled sailor handled his spread of canvas reassured Mrs. Balfour. As the Three Sisters heeled over and slid out into the rippling harbor, its feminine passenger even gave a little exclamation of delight.
After a half hour’s sail out soundward, the Three Sisters came about. With several short tacks, Bob almost on the bowsprit to enjoy the zest of the salt spray (despite his mother’s half-hearted protests), Captain Joe laid over on his last haul for the wharf landing. Then came the accident that turned the pleasure sail into a catastrophe.