Quarles looked at the speaker, then at the mashie.
"With that?"
"Why not?" asked the man.
"Why?" asked Quarles.
"If I can do it with this I can do it with anything," was the answer.
"That's true," said the professor, making for the next tee. There was no arguing with a man of this type.
The tee was on the top of the creek bank.
"I was right," said Quarles. "Look, Wigan, they did make for this haven last night."
It was almost low water. The bank on the golf course side was steep, varying in height, but comparatively low near the tee, and an irregular line of piles stuck up out of the mud below, the tops of half a dozen of them rising higher than the bank. On the other side of the creek the shore sloped up gradually from a wide stretch of mud.
In the narrow waterway was a yacht, about eighteen tons, I judged. That she was the same we had seen laboring in the gale last night I could not say, but certainly she was much weather-marked and looked forlorn. She had not had a coat of paint recently, the brasswork on her was green with neglect, and her ropes and sails looked old and badly cared for. Yet her lines were dainty, and, straining at her hawser, she reminded me of a disappointed woman fretting to free herself from an undesirable position.