“They wouldn’t sink, would they, Mrs. Carey?” Polly asked.
“Maybe they wouldn’t, but they’d ship a lot of water, and rock so that any one who wasn’t used to them, might be thrown overboard, and in a heavy sea like the Portland boat leaves behind her there’d be no picking you up.”
Polly forgot to tell the girls the warning, and in the hurry of preparation for the day’s jaunt it slipped from her memory. Aunty Welcome packed a mighty lunch for them, but flatly refused to be one of the party. It was their first extended sail without Tom’s company to reassure them against mishap, but the day was perfect for sailing, and the yachts took the breeze as lightly and as easily as gulls. Polly led, and took a course across the bay towards the hotel, then tacked, and started straight for Smugglers’ Cove. The Tidy Jane led the way gallantly, clear to the Cove, as a flagship should, but the girls declared it was no proof of the Jane’s superiority as a sailing craft. It was the way the Commodore handled her. While the others handled their main sheets gingerly and cautiously, letting out and tacking slowly, Polly was ready and waiting as soon as she reached the end of the first course to let go, and the minute the point was reached, biff! Polly’s sail slackened, the boom swung about, and the cotton caught the puff in a jiffy, and was off on the new stretch.
“Some day you’ll do that, and you’ll tumble over into the water,” Isabel told her. “I always expect to get hit on the head when my boom swings about.”
“Then you’ll be like Yonny Yohnson, the little Swedish sailor from Stockholm that the Captain told us about,” laughed Polly. “Listen,” and she quoted: “‘Yonny Yohnson, he yump off yib-boom into yolly boat, and spoil his yellow yacket.’”
Crullers was always the last to get started from the landing. Yachting with Jane Daphne Adams, as Polly said, was a serious matter, and she gave it her undivided attention. Her sail was different from those on the other boats. It was shorter and wider, and ribbed crosswise like a junk boat’s sails. Tom told them that Phil and Jack, Polly’s cousins, had put it on, just as a freakish notion, and it surely was freakish to look at; but it was easy to handle and Crullers liked it. There was no cabin, but the cockpit was roomy and had several lockers underneath the seats.
“Cabin,” she had said quite scornfully, when the girls had said it was too bad she didn’t have one. “Call that little dark hole a cabin? Why, it’s all you can do to turn around in it. And even if I did have one, I’d only use it to sleep in, and then where would my yacht be?”
“You mean where would you be?” laughed Polly.
It was a little past eight in the morning when they arrived at Smugglers’ Cove. There was a line beach to run up on, and the shores looked inviting.
“This is a perfect cove,” said Ruth. “It must have given the place its name years ago. Those little bunches of grass over yonder look like an atoll, girls, the way they bob up here and there around the shore.”