“That makes me think of one of father’s stories,” he said. “Uncle Joe, an old darkey down home, used to say he’d a heap rather be killed on land than on water, ‘’case if dey’s an accident on land, why, dar you is, and if dey’s a blow-up in de middle ob de ocean, whar is you?’”
“I don’t care,” persisted Polly, even while she laughed at the story with the others. “Most people are afraid of rocks when they’re boating, but rocks won’t hurt you if you know how to manage them. I’d rather have rocks along shore with some water around them, deep enough to let a three-foot draft boat slip in, than half a mile of wet sand to climb over after you’ve anchored.”
“You won’t get any three-foot draft on a catboat unless your centerboard’s down,” Ted said. “I know because I’ve heard my brothers tell about theirs. It hasn’t any more keel than a washbowl. I like a ‘cat’ myself, because you jam her down against the wind, and lie back and rest. In a yawl or knockabout, you have to change around, and shift about, and fuss every time you tack. I don’t think that’s any fun.”
Polly’s brown eyes sparkled, and she stuck her hands deep in her reefer pockets, and looked out at the wide ocean as if she wanted to clasp hands with it.
“I do,” she said. “I’d like to have a boat that was nearly all sail, and just me sitting on a plank. I love to feel the wind in my face, and reach out to it. A catboat’s a regular tub.”
“No, it isn’t, Polly, truly,” Ted protested. “There’s a picture in my Tennyson of the passing of Arthur, and the three queens came after him in a catboat. You can tell it is just a catboat by looking at it.”
Everyone laughed, but Ted stood her ground sturdily.
“Not a catboat, goose,” explained Ruth, merrily. “It must have been a ‘shallop flitting, silken sailed, skimming down to Camelot.’”
“There,” cried Sue. “I’ve been wanting a boat all along, that would be different from those the other girls sail, and now I have it. My boat shall be the only unique one in the yacht club. I shall get me a shallop.”
They trooped in to breakfast with rosy cheeks and laughing lips. Mrs. Yates was awaiting them. The Admiral and she were talking over old Virginia days, and the girls were glad to listen to some of those tales of long ago, while they partook of deliciously-fried scallops, crisp bacon on toast triangles, corn fritters, and fried sweet potatoes, served as only the Senator’s plantation cook could serve them.