But the old sea-giant--the Tall Standing Man--was proof even against the wheedling use of the Indian name which his Camp Fire Group had bestowed upon him and which could generally, according to his own weakening lament, beguile him into a compliance with being shoved around like a schooner in a tide-rip, at the will of a score of headstrong girls.
“No! No--siree!” He shook his massive shoulders determinedly. “If I was only sure of the tide--and the tug-captain who’s to tow the new hull round was sure of it--I’d haul down my colors an’ ye could.”
“I know a girl who was launched on a new vessel like this--from this very ship-yard, too--and she an’ her father went round to Gloucester on it--the new hull--and she said it was a sort of ‘royal progress’ all the way; everybody from every house and camp along the shore tooting horns, blowing whistles, waving the biggest flags they had, cheering the new vessel on her course--hoping she’d escape the submarines,” said Lilia--Little Owl--looking longingly at that newly launched ship’s hull rocking gracefully upon the river, with her deck white as a hound’s tooth.
“Well! the tide answered for them to go through the canal, I reckon,” was Captain Andy’s reply, still accompanied by negative shrugs. “That’s the new canal that they built since war began, to avoid the danger of taking freshly launched ships outside the harbor, into open sea, at all. Happen it might answer to-day. Happen it mightn’t! Ye never can tell about the tide in this river. An’ if ye had to go outside, how would you like to see a sub pop up to leeward an’ fire a tin fish at you, as I did when I was running that slick old coaster, the Susie Jane, last spring?”
“How could the said sub know that a new vessel had just been launched up here and was being towed round?” questioned Sara Davenport. Her tones were small; it was the first time she had spoken since her challenge to Atlas upbearing the rib--and what came of it.
“I can’t tell how. But information leaks out somehow. Spies, I guess,” was the mariner’s answer.
“Fresh rumors from the sky, as the aviators say,” burst forth Olive excitedly. “According to report those two who landed by our Council Fire and entertained us so well, did discover a lonely hut, with a wireless outfit attached, in some part of the woods along the shore here.”
“They’ll have to do some more tall scouting, I reckon--comb the shores from end to end--before they nab every one who’s playing into the hands of the ‘Jerries.’” Menokijábo shook his great head. “A spy on any side has a quick eye an’ his nerve with him. Anyhow, I’m not taking chances on the safety of this new hull--against the odds of somebody, who has a ‘nifty’ scheme up his sleeve, signaling out to sea about her--by letting you girls make the towed trip on her new deck.”
“And you won’t take chances on our going through the canal, either, on--on the tide being obliging?” Sybil eyed him wistfully.
“Great Neptune! Not much! With a river-channel that’s all ‘studdled’ with quicksands an’ changing gullies, as this one is,” glancing down the brackish river, “the old tide just naturally has to chase itself out a little faster at one time than another. Just high tide now--four o’clock--five by my watch! They didn’t change the tide-table when, on Easter morning, they shoved the clocks an hour ahead. They couldn’t work any daylight-saving racket on the hoary old tide,” laughingly; “’twould upset calculations all over the globe.”