“I was wondering,” continued the boy, “whether you could manage somehow to buy me the sort of boat I’d need. Almost anything would do that was half-way decent—and clean, too, because summer folk wouldn’t want to get into her if she wasn’t.”
Mr. Holden shook his head slowly. “I dare say it might work out all right, Jack,” he said, “and a little more money would come in very handy, but you’d better get the notion out of your head, son, before you waste any more time thinking about it. I couldn’t afford to buy you even a dory, and it’s about six times too far across the water at that point to row, anyway.”
“All right, Dad,” said Jack, quietly. He realized that there was no use in asking his father to perform impossibilities. Later in the evening Mr. Holden noted an expression of quiet determination in the lad’s face such as he had so often seen in Mrs. Holden’s when, things not going well, her resourceful brain and stout heart had set themselves the task of getting affairs back in order.
The next day was Saturday, and shortly after breakfast, there being no school, Jack and his chum, George Santo, started off on a hike toward the sand-dunes and salt-flats which lay for miles to the north of Greenport. This region the boys had made their playground ever since they were old enough to go about together. It was on the bold summit of Indian Head, a rocky barrier which for centuries had kept the encroaching sea at bay, that they had built their first wigwam out of driftwood, and stood, at the mature ages of nine and ten respectively, adorned with feathers and armed with spears, guarding their hunting-grounds from the hated palefaces who never seemed to approach much nearer than Greenport. From there they let their eyes wander in imagination over vast herds of buffalo, moose and antelope grazing peacefully on a far-stretching prairie. At times, as the hated palefaces all seemed to be fully occupied elsewhere, phantom palefaces had to blunder upon their hunting-grounds, and these intruders were hastily despatched or led captive to the driftwood wigwam, there to be held as hostages. There were terrific battles up on Indian Head, but somehow or other, whatever the overwhelming odds with which they were faced, the two lone braves invariably came out from the encounters unscathed. But the wigwam was now scattered to the four winds of heaven. The boys had grown too old for that sort of make-believe; yet their love for the region of dunes and marsh endured.
On this particular morning they headed over toward the salt-flats above Cow Creek, and then followed the course of the Sangus River toward the sea. They must have trudged half a dozen miles by this circuitous route before Jack, standing on the rippled summit of a wind-swept dune, drew his companion’s attention to the fact that the Sangus had changed its sandy course.
“It must have been caused by the flood and the last gale,” he said. “See, the water has come right across this low bit and—and—say, George, the old sloop, the Sea-Lark, was lying nearly buried just along here. I shouldn’t wonder if the river has swept her away now. Come on, let’s see how the old dear is.”
Ten minutes’ tramping brought them to the place, and each gave a cry of joy when they saw that the sloop lay exactly as she had lain for three years. But she had escaped the effects of the recent gale by a narrow margin only, for the Sangus had swirled over its banks, eating its way through the sand to a new course, until it now flowed within twenty feet of the Sea-Lark.
The boys climbed aboard the derelict, and with their legs dangling over the side, with healthy appetites attacked a parcel of sandwiches.
“I’m glad she’s still here,” said Jack. “Do you remember when I was a pirate king last summer and made you walk the plank? We’ve had lots of fun on this sloop. If she’d been lying a mile or so nearer Greenport, crowds of kids would have been swarming all over her and she’d have been broken up.”
George nodded, and poked the last of the sandwiches into his mouth.