Bevis agreed, and Mark crept aft on hands and knees, anxious not to disturb the trim of the boat; Bevis went forward and took his place in the same manner, buttoning his jacket and turning up his collar.
Mark steered quite as well. Bevis had learned how to work the boat, to coax her, from the boat and the sails themselves. Mark had learned from Bevis, and much quicker. It requires time, continued observation, and keenest perception to learn from nature. When one has thus acquired the art, others can learn from him in a short while and easily. Mark steered and handled the sheet, and brought her round as handily as if he had been at it all the time.
These lengthened zigzags soon carried them far up the broad water, and the farther they went the smaller the waves became, having so much the less distance to come, till presently they were but big ripples, and the boat ceased to dance. As the waves did not now oppose her progress so much, there was but little spray, and she slipped through faster. The motive power, the wind, was the same; the opposing force, the waves, less. The speed increased, and they soon approached Bevis’s island, having worked the whole distance up against the wind. They agreed to land, and Mark brought her to the very spot where they had got out before. Bevis doused the mainsail, leaped out, and tugged her well aground. After Mark had stepped ashore they careened the boat and baled out the water.
There was no tree or root sufficiently near to fasten the painter to, so they took out the anchor, carried it some way inland, and forced one of the flukes into the ground. The boat was quite safe and far enough aground not to drift off, but it was not proper to leave a ship without mooring her. Mark wanted to go and look at the place he thought so well adapted for a cave, so they walked through between the bushes, when he suddenly remembered that the vessel in which they had just accomplished so successful a voyage had not got a name.
“The ship ought to have a name,” he said. “Blue boat sounds stupid.”
“So she ought,” said Bevis. “Why didn’t we think of it before? There’s Arethusa, Agamemnon, Sandusky, Orient—”
“Swallow, Viking, Saint George—but that won’t do,” said Mark. “Those are ships that sail now and some have steam; what were old ships—”
“Argo,” said Bevis. “I wonder what was the name of Ulysses’ ship—”
“I know,” said Mark, “Pinta—that’s it. One of Columbus’s ships, you know. He was the first to go over there, and we’re the first on the New Sea.”
“So we are; it shall be Pinta, I’ll paint it, and the island ought to have a name too.”