Pleasantly the hours passed and the landmarks on shore—summer hotels, gaudy villas smirking coquettishly through the trees, boating establishments where gentlemen hire canoes for their ladies, or perhaps ladies for their canoes. Slowly we drew near to Mimico. There is an asylum at Mimico. We have heard friends of ours account for its presence there on the ground that one must be out of one's mind to live at Mimico; but as they had been fined for speeding through the village, it is possible that their opinion was not entirely unbiased.
Inch by inch Mimico slipped past the beautiful low free-board of the Gladiolus. And incidentally, that famous free-board began to seem lower than ever. For some little time the wind had been rising, and the waves kept growing bigger—"quite a sea kicking up," as Algie said—and now and then there was an unmistakeable slap of spray over the side. The original intention had been to go some miles further along the shore for lunch, but Algie finally decided to turn back to Mimico—not that he distrusted the seaworthy qualities of the Gladiolus or himself, but merely as a concession to the fears of the ladies in the party. He announced his intention of landing at the Asylum. He had been a visitor or a guest or something there, and professed to know the doctor quite well. Besides they had a good wharf, he said.
Algie managed to warp in the Gladiolus, after several determined efforts to knock the end off the concrete pier. Then we landed the grub. Each of the three gentlemen—we include Algie—assumed the white man's burden, while the ladies tripped on gracefully ahead. We advanced into the grounds of the Asylum. There were a number of the inmates strolling about, but they made no attempt to accost us. Evidently they thought we were new and more than usually weak-minded arrivals. There was much to support such a view.
We found a nice spot for picnicking. It was on a low bluff overlooking the Lake. Sombre pines cast romantic shadows about us. And the lunch was excellent—just such a lunch as marooned sailors might dream to find awaiting them in heaven. We even had initialed napkins. And as the food went down our spirits rose. We felt that the perils of the deep were a myth, and we said ha-ha in our hearts and asked for another piece of pie. Then, having eaten and the chicken bones having been thrown over the cliff, we lay about in graceful postures, listening to what the wild waves were saying and quoting such verse as we remembered out of the fifth reader.
Suddenly it occurred to someone that the wild waves were saying a good deal and that they were talking in a big bass voice. We woke up to the fact that the wind had wakened up some time previously.
"Lord, but it's going to be rough!" said Algie:
But none of us realized just how rough it was going to be, or we would have all walked to town. Seen from above, waves are very different from what they are when seen from below—a truth which no member of that party will ever doubt again. We hastily packed up and made a run for the wharf and the boat. When we got there we found that another boat had also sought its shelter. Two sun-burned youths in extremely primitive costumes brooded in it and smoked cigarettes and cursed their engine. They had tried everything they could think of, including a lot of language they had never thought of before, and the darn thing wouldn't go. Thereupon Algie climbed into their boat and worked like an African slave for half an hour, in spite of our appeals and unveiled hints that he was an ass.
At last even Algie gave the task up and consented to get back into his own boat and begin a little Græco-Roman with his own engine. Strangely enough, that temperamental machine was quite amenable this time. It took only twelve minutes and a few damns to start it. Promptly we backed into the other fellow's anchor rope and put several fancy stitches into it with our propeller. Naturally our propeller became somewhat involved in the process. The other gentlemen—and when we say "gentlemen!"—refused to let us cut the rope, so there was nothing for it but to land the ladies once more, shoo them away from the wharf, undress Algie, and put him into the water. We kept him there till he had untied the propeller, and then we dragged him in, half-frozen. When he recovered sufficiently to be able to speak, he used some expressions which we are personally treasuring up for an occasion of great mental stress.
We rounded the break-water, incidentally scraping all the paint off one side of the boat, and then everything happened at once. A great big wave with a white head saw us coming, gave a glad, wild shout, and jumped aboard. The Gladiolus shuddered and groaned, and we all shuddered and groaned. But it was only the beginning. The big wave was followed by a bigger, which also climbed playfully aboard and coiled up in our laps. And then all Lake Ontario seemed to crowd in on us at once. We were breathing, drinking, and absorbing water which we had intended using solely for purposes of navigation.
The way the Gladiolus acted would have been a revelation to a builder of submarines. That rakish craft, with the long, narrow lines and the lovely low freeboard, dived into every wave and shipped it gracefully all over the passengers. With a very little coaxing, she would have plunged down and run along the bottom. Now and then she came up to breathe, and then we all looked a mute farewell at one another and disappeared once more beneath the foam. None of us ever expected to see Yonge Street and the department-stores again.