But Arnold interrupted him with a chuckle. “I have!” he said. “It’s our garage!”
CHAPTER XVIII
MR. TUCKER CONSENTS
Their troubles were soon over, and, seated in front of a fine, big fire in the Deerings’ living room, they recounted their adventures while they sipped from steaming cups of beef tea and voraciously devoured bread and butter sandwiches. Later the car was brought around and Toby and Phebe, warm and sleepy, were whisked away to the little house in Harbor Street, to the accompaniment of incessant shrill warnings, which, in their somnolent state, became confused with fog-horns. After that came slumber, deep and undisturbed.
The fog vanished in the morning, and shortly before noon the two boys stretched a line from the Frolic to the Aydee and pulled the latter easily enough into deep water. Then Toby produced a chart, and they tried to trace their wanderings of the evening before. The knockabout had, it appeared, covered some three and a half miles with the tide and what little breeze had aided, and, instead of grounding on the outer shore of the Head, had drifted around the point, and then, by some freak of the currents, turned into Nobbs’ Bay and settled her nose in the sand a half-mile beyond the Deerings’ landing. She must have passed within a hundred feet of the Trainors’ houseboat, they concluded, on the way. Arnold somewhat triumphantly pointed out that he had, after all, been right as to direction, and that if they had set off along the shore as he had advised they’d have reached home much sooner and without struggling through thickets and briers. All of which Toby was forced to acknowledge.
“I thought we were along here somewhere,” he defended, putting a finger on the outer shore. “And if we’d gone to the right we’d have traveled toward Shinnecock. How that boat ever got around the point and turned in here I can’t see!”
“Huh!” returned Arnold in superior tones. “That boat knows enough to go home, Toby. I’ve got it trained!”
Arnold spent most of that afternoon stocking the yacht with things which, he predicted, would make shipwreck a positive pleasure! He replaced the lost oar, tucked two suits of oilskins into a cubby, invested in a square of canvas which, if necessity required, could be pulled across the cockpit, and would, doubtless have installed that heating system had it been in any way possible. The compass, a very elaborate one in a mahogany box, arrived that day from New York, and was put in place. And then Arnold set out to find a tender.
“If we’d had a tender,” he explained, “we could have dropped anchor most anywhere and rowed ourselves ashore. Besides, every yacht ought to have a tender.”