As soon as he arrived he would immediately begin calling up all sorts of mechanics, plumbers, boiler-makers, painters, boat-builders, and electricians. Lengthy conferences would ensue in which frequent references would be made to cylinders and hulls and carburetors and propellers, and the time when certain jobs should have been done, and what a helluva nerve they had to ask any such price. The language was usually very technical. But it was occasionally quite lucid and human, though not of a nature to bear repetition in print which is intended to go into Christian homes.
During the two or three hours in the afternoon when Algie was with us, he would run out every few minutes and come back with a coil of lead pipe, or a dry battery, or a can of gasoline. And then he would slip away at about four o'clock with an intensely preoccupied air.
We all knew where he was going and what he was going to do. He had bought a motor-boat from a friend, and he was trying to put it in such condition that he could go out in it without having to wear a life-belt. Of course, the friend had guaranteed it as the safest, speediest, staunchest, and trimmest little craft that ever got in front of a ferry-boat on the Bay. But one should never buy a motor-boat from a friend. Better buy it from a deadly enemy. Then you may discover a big hole in the bottom of it, or a dynamite bomb stowed away forward with a clock attachment. But that is all. Once you have patched up the hole or thrown the bomb overboard, you are all right. But when you buy a motor-boat from a friend you are never done with trouble.
After Algie had had the Gladiolus—his wife christened it—for about a week, he realized that he had to put a new engine in it. He put the engine in, got the thing started, and headed for the Island. He got there just in time—to save his life, that is. The Gladiolus sank gently to rest on a sand-bar in three feet of water. The liquid composing the Bay is admittedly rather thick, but it managed to ooze into that boat in about four hundred and forty different places. Algie said afterwards that it had looked to him as though the boat were being invaded by an army of angle-worms.
With a marine derrick they enticed the Gladiolus out of the bosom of the sand-bar, and got her back to dry-dock. Then Algie started in to put a new hull around the engine. It amounted to that by the time he got all the repairs made. Then she had to be painted. Also she had to have a new propeller, ditto some chairs, ditto lanterns and a search-light, ditto a set of cushions. But at last the work was done. Algie was tired but happy; and he wanted to share his bliss.
"You simply got to come, old man," he said in a spirit of exuberant hospitality, "won't take no for an answer. Ten sharp, Sunday morning, at Sunnyside—the Missus and I will be right there as you get off the car. We'll run up beyond Port Credit and have lunch by the lakeside. Sharp at ten, mind!"
In a moment of weakness we consented. Nay, more, we looked forward to it. We had visions of ourself leaning back in one of the sumptuous deck-chairs of the Gladiolus, as that beauteous speed-devil ate up the watery miles on old Ontario. We could imagine the shores whizzing by, and the Hamilton boats being left hopelessly behind. So we prayed for fine weather. And when we say we prayed we don't mean that we issued an order to Divine Providence like a parson, but we made a timid and tentative appeal. It was answered. It was one of the finest Sundays we have ever seen. We don't suppose we were really the cause of it, you know, but we felt gratified. When a chap doesn't pray to excess, he naturally is surprised and delighted to get what he asks for. But, alas, we knew not what we did.
When we got off the car at Sunnyside—a popular local beach—there was Algie, sure enough, in white ducks and a stern expression of countenance. Just imagine the face of Admiral Sir David Beatty as he prepared to take the battle-cruisers into action off Jutland, and you will have a faint notion of the concentrated solemnity and sense of responsibility which sat upon Algie's features as he shook our hand in an absent-minded manner and told us to hustle aboard. We did hustle. We don't mind admitting that we were impressed. We felt that here was a seaman who entered upon the grave duties of his position in no frivolous spirit—a true sailor who loved and yet feared the mighty deep.
When we got to the wharf where the gasoline wonder reposed her graceful length, we found Mrs. Algie and two other guests. They were very nice people, very nice indeed. The husband was a clerical-looking chap—his facial make-up suggested a curate in an ineffectual disguise. But his conversation was at times decidedly unclerical—at least, it wasn't the sort of thing one gets from clergymen in their more professional moments. When that big wave came over and sloshed down his neck, he said—but again we anticipate.
Algie and his wife were in nautical costume as befitted the skipper and skipperess. Algie wore a nice pair of white ducks and a white shirt very open at the throat. Mrs. Algie was also in ducks—cut on a different pattern, of course. It was a very fetching little costume. We say "little" advisedly. The skirt had been made remarkably short, or it had grown that way from too long and too intimate association with steam-laundries. The effect, in any case, was to keep it hovering about midway between the nautical and the naughty.