“I know they are not handsome, but they are very useful,” replied Egan. “They are called Chesapeake Bay dogs, and they belong to a breed that are considered to be the best retrievers in the world. You don’t need a boat to pick up your wounded ducks when you have one of these fellows in the blind with you, and neither do you have to tell him when to go out after a bird. If you kill half a dozen ducks and wound one, he will swim straight through the dead ones and take after the wounded one; and he’ll have it, too, before he comes back to the shore. That one,” continued Egan, pointing to the largest of the dogs, “once swam more than three miles through floating ice in pursuit of a wing-tipped canvas-back. Father was in the blind with me, and he was so very much afraid that he was going to lose the dog, that he sent me out in a boat to pick him up. When I overtook him he had the bird, and was striking out for the shore, apparently none the worse for his long cold swim. Dogs of this breed are very enduring while they last, but in the end they are laid up with rheumatism, just as a man would be who spent his life as they do. Now, come with me, and I will show you the swiftest and handiest little boat on the bay. I call her a cutter for short, and that is what almost every one else calls her; but she isn’t a cutter—she’s a yawl.”
The boys followed their host along a broad walk, through an extensive and well-kept flower-garden which, in the proper season, must have been one solid mass of bloom, and down to a little stream that flowed into the bay a short distance from the house. On the bank they found a snug boat-house, which was used as a place of storage for two or three canoes, oyster-dredges, lobster-pots, and various other things which none of the visitors, except Hopkins, knew the use of. One of the canoes having been shoved into the water, the boys got into it, and pushed off toward a couple of little vessels that were riding at anchor in the bay. One of them was an oyster-boat—Don and Bert were sure of that, for in rig and model she corresponded with the descriptions they had read of such vessels; but the other one puzzled them. She was not a sloop, for she had two masts; and yet she was not a schooner, because the mizzen mast, if that was the proper name for it, was stepped close to the stern. But she was a beautiful little vessel they found when they boarded her, and very roomy, too, although she was only seventeen feet in length, with five feet beam. She had a house or hatch on deck, which proved to be the top of the cabin, and a small cock-pit, in which the boy who managed the helm stood or sat while he steered the vessel. The cabin was spacious, owing to the deep, straight sides of the boat, and was provided with two berths, one on each side, which could be turned up against the bulk-head, or let down at pleasure, like the berths in a sleeping-car. Behind the foremast, which came down through the forward end of the cabin, was the alcohol stove, on which the captain and owner cooked all his meals while he was cruising about the bay—that is, when he didn’t feel in the humor to go ashore to cook them, or couldn’t get ashore on account of the surf. There were two water-tanks, plenty of lockers in which to stow food, clothing, and hunting and fishing accoutrements—in short, she seemed to be perfect in every particular; and Don and Bert, who, as we know, took almost as much delight in a sail-boat as they did in their ponies, were prompt to say so.
“Yes, I am rather proud of her, because she was built according to my own ideas of what a boat for single-handed cruising ought to be,” said Egan, as he led the way out of the cabin, and seated himself in the cock-pit. “First and foremost, you can’t capsize her. If the Mystery had been built after this model she would have weathered that gale without shipping so much as a bucket of water.”
(It will be remembered that the Mystery was a yacht belonging to Mr. Packard, a brother of Judge Packard, who was General Gordon’s nearest neighbor. Accompanied by his wife and child, and two or three friends, the Mystery’s owner set sail from Newport for Bridgeport, but was overtaken on the way by a terrific storm, which wrecked his yacht, and sent her to the bottom. Her entire crew would have gone with her, had it not been for the fact that Enoch Williams and his crowd of deserters, who had run away in the Sylph, were close at hand. Enoch and Lester Brigham went off in a small boat, and saved the yacht’s crew at the risk of their own lives, and when they were captured by Captain Mack and his men, who were following close in their wake in the schooner Idlewild, and taken back to the academy under arrest, they were looked upon as heroes rather than culprits. Their act of bravery did not, however, save them from a court-martial. They lost every one of the credit marks they had earned during the term, and that took away their last chance for promotion. Egan and his friends could recall all the incidents connected with the wreck and the rescue, and they became excited whenever they thought of them.)
“What do you mean by ‘single-handed cruising’?” asked Curtis, continuing the conversation which we have for the moment interrupted. “Can one person handle this boat in all kinds of weather?”
“Certainly; and there is where the beauty of her rig shows itself. If I want to beat in or out of a narrow channel I run up the mainsail only, and then she works like a cat-boat, never missing stays, but keeping her headway clear around. If I am caught out in a gale, I drop the mainsail, and scud along under the jib and mizzen. I have stayed out on the bay alone, fooling around, when boats that were twice as big as this were running for shelter. I expect to lose her some day, but it will be through no fault of my own.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Bert.
“Why, I am accused of having assisted that detective in running those big-gunners to earth last fall,” answered Egan. “I didn’t do it, but some of their friends saw me talking with the detective on several different occasions, and they know that I detest their business, for I have often said so when perhaps I ought to have kept my tongue still. It is very plain that somebody gave the detective all the information he wanted, and, as I said, these poachers lay it to me. They have sent me word that they intend to get even with me, and that’s why I expect to lose my boat.”
“Can’t you head them off in any way?” asked Don, whose chivalrous nature revolted at the mere mention of so cowardly a way of “getting even.” “You are not obliged to stand still and see your property destroyed.”
“Of course not, and I don’t intend to do it, either,” said Egan, in very decided tones. “These boats are guarded every night, and have been for a year. One of our darkies sleeps on board the oyster-boat, and he has two of the retrievers and a loaded musket for company. It will be a cold season when those dogs get left, for they are all ears and nose, and would rather fight than eat when they are hungry. Now, perhaps, we had better go ashore. Breakfast will be ready directly, and then we will take a run down the bay, unless you can think of something else you would rather do.”