Sauce
Boil one tomato and strain for essence. Add little of gravy smothering duck. Thicken with cream, flavor with tablespoon of guava jelly, dash of Worcestershire, pepper, salt, and add one egg beaten. Don’t get in too much duck gravy as it is too greasy.
Duck
Take the four breast meats of two duck. Smother them 5 to 8 min. in ½″ water skin-side down in covered saucepan. Dip in egg and cracker crumbs once and fry brown in very hot bacon drippings. Serve on toast with sauce poured over.
This is an economical dish, too, for you get all the breast meat and none of the other gets cooked until you put it into pot for a stew or soup. I think a touch of lemon in place of Worcestershire would help that sauce, but it’s a mighty good dream as it is.
Weather grew continually more ugly and finally about sundown it began to blow and rain southeast with good, earnest tropical rain. Well I guess, and more to come. It swept across decks like a flood and dashed into cockpit so hard we had to shut cabin doors. We smoked up our pipes and managed to create quite a cosy atmosphere.
February 20th. Turned out before day broke and found things shaping for a pretty morning. Queer what critters we humans be. Last night in the blow and rain I felt like home or die, and this morning it was Miami or bust. Kicked my crew awake and we were soon picking our way among the shoals and islands of Indian River Narrows. All the marshes were in young green. Vivid in the early morning light. H. could hear the birds everywhere and we passed a great flight of swallows winging north. From these Narrows we entered the long stretch of lower Indian River and stopped first thing to lend a man a hand who the evening before had run his little houseboat high and dry and with his wife had spent a most uncomfortable night. It was no use, we couldn’t budge him. Before we left he paddled over with his anchor and a warp big enough for the Fall River boat and asked us to bend it on for him as he frankly confessed he never could learn to tie those knots. We put sail to her and with fresh northwester on our counter began to reel off the miles in great shape. Having only about 500 lbs. of sand aboard the old boat would plow her nose right into it and try to turn and look us in the face, but with launch tied astern with quarter lines we kept her head southerly and let her boil with about 2 ft. of water under her keel. At Fort Pierce, a distressingly barren looking town, we stopped for gas and went on with a reef in the mainsail. The afternoon’s sail was what you read about. Smooth water as blue as blue can be. Green shores not too far away. A smart breeze with balmy warmth to it. Calm at sunset with a great full moon rising into a purple-blue tropic sky. Quietly to anchor under west shore some few miles below Jensen.
February 21st. Dawn found me peeking out and boiling coffee, but heavy land fog kept us at anchor and we didn’t point her nose south until 7 o’clock. The fog away, there came a bright hot sun which brought out the awning pretty quick. We crossed St. Lucie Inlet and there watched an Indian fisherman stand on the bow of his motorboat and take her over the shoals and through the surf. The bright sky, blue water breaking over the bar, the boat, the man so unconsciously graceful made a delightful picture. Then on into narrow crooked going, deep into the tangled mass of mangrove swamps. Finger posts guided us for the most part well but sometimes there were none, and we wandered off into blind leads only to have to push back and try again. About noon we passed through Hobe Sound where on left-hand shore which we skirted were lots of ideally beautiful Florida winter homes. The houses unpretentious, well done, and the gardens a mass of bloom and color. Again we plunged into swamp but now much more beautiful. Then we shot out into Jupiter River just above the inlet and making a mighty sharp bend jumped at once into the swamps again. We are in this swamp as I write. So narrow the creek that the palm trees cast shadows on the paper as I write. Color is everywhere now. Green in every shade, yellows, browns and reds. The mangroves with their thousand roots make a green wall along our way. The water flows in and under for Lord knows how far. I want to write to a man who has put up a “For Sale” sign and ask him whether he sells by the acre or gallon. Flowers, too, lots of them. Morning-glories and all sorts and kinds and colors that I don’t know the name of. Passed from the creek out into Lake Worth about 5 p.m. and sailed down towards Palm Beach as the sun was setting and that wonderful blue was growing in the east. Came to anchor at nightfall off the docks and gardens of the Royal Poinciana and watched the big moon rise over the gables of that famed establishment.
For several days now Scotty has given us much anxiety. Even warm malted milk has what you call distressed her, and she has not been particular as to where to be distressed. Tonight after supper we finally found her stiff as a board in bottom of launch. We gathered round to shed a tear when she lifted her head, cried “skizzgah! skizzgah!” and returned to life. She is a mighty sick mimi tonight, however. I am afraid that old broken end of glass medicine dropper is trying to permanently locate in her interior. She does not seem to suffer pain so will just let things go. I hate to think of her leaving us. Trains of cars cross the bridge near by, and the fit may have been caused by fright at their noise.
At 9 p.m. I had a fit of my own and nothing for it but must doll up, go ashore and see the sights. To the hotel, of course, and there instead of finding people out enjoying the glory of the beautiful evening we found them working hard at the dance and at cards. It is all very interesting and to me novel. I have never seen a crowd of Americans of this stamp at play. The women looked tired and fagged and the men not much better. There was no light-heartedness anywhere and the whole thing done as if on the stage. There were several couples who later in the grill-room danced the “trot” for the edification of all hands to the music of a nigger band and singers. I got the impression the girls were professionals and the men working out board and lodging. I learned later that their names appeared in the newspapers as “society leaders.” I saw only one or two aristocratic looking women, the others were not more than one generation from the immigration office. It will be many a year yet before our people learn how to enjoy their leisure time. How easy in this new workshop of ours to make a few dollars, but how hard it seems for people to get any real pleasure in the spending of them when made.