In half an hour Oscar could beat to windward as well as an old salt, though his education as a boatman was by no means completed. The Monkey, which had been moving at the rate of less than a mile an hour, had by this time got out into the middle of the lake, where she felt the full force of the wind.
Like all monkeys, the sloop was behaving very badly indeed; but it was solely because she was badly handled. Dory was confident she would meet with an accident; and he required Oscar to come about off Scotch Bonnet, about three miles below the mouth of the river. After some manœuvring, he got the foresail on the port side, with the mainsail on the starboard; and the Goldwing began to fly, wing-and-wing, before the wind.
The wind had a reach of several miles from the head of North-west Bay, and there was considerable sea. The schooner rolled, pitched, plunged, and yawed about at a fearful rate. Oscar found that he had his hands more than full. He wanted to give it up, but the skipper assured him he was doing as well as any one could; that all vessels knocked about like that when running exactly before a fresh wind.
“But isn’t there any danger in staving along like this, Dory?” asked Oscar.
“None at all if the boat is well handled. If you vary your present course too much, one or the other of the sails would bang over to the other side. It would do no harm even then, unless it
was the mainsail, and the boom hit you on the head.
“Then, if you should let her come a quarter way around, you would have her in that ugly position with the wind at right angles with the sails, and she would upset. With as much wind as there is to-day, she will go over every time you put her into chancery; and it won’t be her fault either.”
Oscar soon got used to the motion and the erratic gyrations of the boat, and then he enjoyed it. He had been told to steer for a tree on a hill, and he kept the course remarkably well for a beginner. The Goldwing had gone two miles in a little over ten minutes, and the shoal-water of Field’s Bay was ahead of her.
“We must haul up a little, or we shall get aground,” said Dory. “As we are going squarely before the wind, there is no up or down about it; and you must put the helm to starboard. But we will do it without making any sensation,” he added, as he cast off the main-sheet. “The foresail will pop over to the other side, and do it with a rush. Now, starboard, very slowly.”
Dory let out the main-sheet, so that the sail did not draw full. Over went the foresail with a rush.