CHAPTER XVI
LOST IN THE FOG
The Aydee conformed to the limitations of the nearby yacht clubs and was along the lines of many similar boats that Mr. Tucker had built. She was twenty-one feet load water-line by seven feet and three inches beam, with a free board of twenty-two inches. She was half-decked, had no bowsprit, and carried some five hundred square feet of canvas in her mainsail and working jib. She was painted white, with a single gold line, and bore her name on the stern in brass letters. When, that Monday morning, Arnold and Toby hoisted the creamy-white mainsail and jib and the knockabout, catching the little puffs of air that wandered down over the village hill, moved slowly out of the cove, she presented a sight to gladden the heart of even the veriest landlubber.
Arnold had his first lesson in seamanship that morning. Toby started him at the bottom and made him learn every part of the yacht by name—hull, sails, spars, and rigging—and not until Arnold could tell him instantly which was the peak and which was the clew, and so on, would he advance his pupil. Then Arnold committed to memory the names and purposes of halyards and stays and tackles and sheet, or tried to, very impatient all the time to graduate from such kindergarten lore to the more advanced courses of beating and reaching and tacking. But Toby was a stern master and that morning all the Aydee did in the hour that they were out in her was to float slowly out of the harbor, bob around for a time outside, and then demurely return to moorings at the boat yard. Arnold stayed aboard while Toby made the first trip over to Johnstown with an Armenian peddler as passenger and, sprawled across the stern, rubbed the brass letters to a condition of painful brilliancy.
The lessons continued that day between ferry trips and for many days after, until Arnold could be trusted to sail the Aydee in and out of the harbor without bumping anchored craft or running ashore at the point. I’m not going to tell you that Arnold was an apt pupil, for he wasn’t. Sailing a boat isn’t the most difficult science in the world, but it is a science, and one that Arnold found it hard to master. There were several narrow escapes during that first week, one from capsizing out beyond the Head when a sudden flurry of wind, a squall in miniature, found Arnold, to use his own phrase, “asleep at the switch”! And it was always an interesting moment when Arnold picked up his moorings. Sometimes he did it the first try, but more often he spent five or ten minutes jockeying around, with a hard-hearted and critical Toby sitting idly by with the boat-hook. Once the Aydee ran plumb on top of the town float, and Arnold, gazing disgustedly about and wiping the perspiration from his streaming face, gave it as his opinion that the knockabout was trying to get up to the drug store for a glass of soda! Save that a little lead was scraped from her stem, the Aydee was not damaged. Phebe frequently accompanied them on their short voyages, which so far never extended beyond the inner bay, but she refused, politely enough but very firmly, to set foot on the boat when Toby was absent. The Frolic was only used to take Arnold back and forth from the Head, except when Toby infrequently took her to Johnstown in place of the Urnove. That was only when the passengers were numerous, and happened far too seldom!
It was on a Sunday afternoon, some three weeks after the Aydee went into commission, by which time she boasted a silk yacht ensign and an owner’s pennant and flew them gaudily irrespective of all rules and regulations, that the knockabout met with her first adventure. Perhaps, though, misadventure would be better. Arnold, Toby and Phebe embarked about half-past four for a sail down the bay before supper. The breeze was fair but fluky and Toby counseled the skipper to stay near port in case they were becalmed. But Arnold was too fond of sailing the boat to be satisfied with tacking about the harbor mouth, and so set off on a long reach toward the north shore of the bay. It was a fine afternoon with the glare of the sun intensified by haze. The Aydee slipped along nicely under mainsail and jib and the three occupants of the shallow cockpit made themselves comfortable. There were a good many boats out and Arnold, at the tiller, had just enough to do to keep him busy. The breeze lessened when they were off Franklinville and, at Toby’s suggestion, they came about and stood away toward the end of Robins Island. Five minutes later the breeze died down completely and the sails hung limp.
“It’ll be wooden sails for us, I guess,” said Toby, “if we want to get in before midnight. The tide’s coming and that’ll help some, but if the breeze doesn’t freshen again pretty quick you and I’d better get the oars out, Arn.”
Arnold viewed the flat sea anxiously. “What did it do that for?” he asked. “Just when we were going along so nicely. You don’t mean that we’ll have to row all the way back, Toby?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it? It’s only about seven miles.”
“Seven mi—say, are you fooling?”