The boys grinned sheepishly and ran to the back of the car to gather their equipment, and Russell Steele relaxed and dropped his mock military manner. An ex-general of the United States Army, he often kidded Sandy and his friends by pretending that they were soldiers in his command. This time, he reflected, it was very nearly true. In the same way that a general must feel a responsibility toward the men he sends out on a mission, Russell Steele felt responsible for Sandy and Jerry as they were preparing to set out on this trip.
After all, he reminded himself, the trip had been his idea, and the sailboat had been his present to Sandy. He had been using the boat during the last few months while doing some research on special underwater equipment for the government, and now he no longer had any need for it. As Vice President of World Dynamics Corporation, Russell Steele was in charge of the New Projects Division. World Dynamics was a sprawling concern with almost unlimited interests, often in the most secret kinds of affairs, and his work with it often called him to different parts of the world. He had found his stay in Cliffport a pleasant change from some of the remote and often primitive places he had been forced to settle in in the past. Now, however, he was off again, to one more secret destination. He wouldn’t be in a position to use a sailboat again for a long time to come.
Sandy’s Uncle Russ had been brought up on the seacoast of California. While his brother, Sandy’s father, had become fascinated with the rocks and geological formations of the nearby mountains and deserts, he had gone in the other direction to the shores of the Pacific. During nearly all of his boyhood he had puttered around boats and boat yards.
Although Russell Steele had spent most of his adult life in the Army (and maybe because of it) he had always had a soft spot in his heart for the sport of sailing. He had regretted that Sandy, his only nephew, lived inland in Valley View where he was unable to share in this enthusiasm. But Valley View was only a couple of hours from the seacoast and now that Sandy was old enough to drive a car, it would be possible for him to own and enjoy a sailboat.
Uncle Russ thought of all this, and then he wondered whether it had been a good idea to suggest that the boys bring the sloop all the way down from Cliffport on their very first sail. Still, he mused, Jerry seemed like a responsible lad, and he had said that he knew how to handle a boat well enough to make such a trip. And Sandy learned fast and was good with his hands. Well, the General thought to himself, we’ll just have to give them their heads and let them try it to see how they make out....
At that moment in his reflections, the boys joined him with their luggage, and all three started through the boat yard to the waterfront. As they picked their way through the clutter of boats, scrap lumber, railroad tracks and equipment, they passed close by the side of a boat standing on the ways about to be launched. Sandy ran his hand over the gleaming paintwork of the hull, and found that it was as smooth as glass. Jerry explained that great care was given to getting a smooth paint job, because the greatest force working against a boat to slow it down is the friction created by the water passing over the hull. Good racing boats, he told Sandy, are hauled out of the water to be cleaned and painted several times in a season.
Their walk had by now led them down to the water’s edge, where they walked along a weathered wharf. A light, early-morning haze made the colors of the sailboats that floated in the bay seem soft and pale. The water and the sky appeared to be one single surface, with no break or horizon line to indicate where one stopped and the other began. The boat-yard flag on its mast atop the main shed fluttered lazily in a mild breeze, and a gentle ground swell made soft, lapping sounds under the wharf.
Strolling along, they came to a long, steeply sloping gangway that descended to a floating dock, to which were tied several small sailboats that rocked quietly on the smooth swell of Cliffport Bay.
Russell Steele took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed with it. “See there?” he said. “The third sloop—the one with the white hull and the green decks and the varnished mast—that’s your new sailboat, Sandy, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.”
Before he had finished his sentence, Sandy and Jerry were down the steep gangway, racing along the floating dock to where the trim, white sloop was tied. Russ Steele smiled, replaced his pipe in his mouth, and followed at a pace almost as fast as the boys’.