“She’s no fancy yacht,” said Edward Warren, pointing to the canoe drawn in to the bank and moored with a line carried up and hitched to a tree, “but she can go some. She’s won many a touch-and-go race up and down this river with different fleets of tong-men, if she hasn’t got any silver cups to show for it.”
The canoe, a craft of about twenty feet in length and narrow, after the type of canoe common to Chesapeake Bay and its rivers, and carrying two leg-o’-mutton sails and a jib, was not exactly a handsome boat, to be sure. It was built of planking and finished up rather roughly, for use in oystering; but it had, for all that, lines that denoted speed, and the boys were eager to be off in it. They scrambled aboard, got up sails on the slender, raking masts, and, with Edward Warren at the tiller, darted across the river.
It was remarkable, in the eyes of the youths accustomed to a type of craft altogether different, how the narrow, crank looking canoe stood up so stiffly, withstood the wind flaws and sailed so well. Some tongmen came down the river presently, and Edward Warren joined their little fleet, stood along with them, and drew ahead of them all. It was evident, as he had said, that he had a fast canoe.
“How would she behave out in the bay?” asked Henry Burns.
“Fine as a ship,” answered Edward Warren. “The men around here cross the bay in them in pretty rough weather. We’ll go out and take a few seas, and let you see how cleverly she rides.”
They headed out toward the mouth of the river, passed beyond the lighthouse, into the open waters of the bay. It was not rough, but there was some sea running. The canoe weathered it all surprisingly. They followed up the shore of the bay for a mile or two.
Time passed quickly, and it was late in the afternoon when they left the light on their starboard hand in running back again. Edward Warren looked at his crew and laughed.
“You stood it well,” he said. “But you’re a frozen looking lot, for all that. Winter’s a chilly time for yachting, at its best. I tell you what we’ll do. Do you see that house up on the hill? My old friend, Will Adams, lives there all alone. He’ll be pleased enough to see us. We’ll just stand in and land and make him a call, get some coffee and thaw out by his fire before we run home.”
He turned the canoe in and ran up to a little landing not far from the Drum Point lighthouse; they disembarked and walked briskly up the hill. A young man of about thirty, standing in the doorway of the big house they were approaching, hailed them as they drew near.
“Hello, Ed,” he called cheerily, “I saw you out on the river. Got a crew with you, eh? Pretty cold yachting for a raw crew, isn’t it? Come in, I’m glad to see you. There’s a good fire going. Cousins, you say, and Henry Burns—all from Maine. I’m glad to meet you all. Take off your duds. You’ll stay to supper with me, you know. It’s a dull life I lead here, and I’m glad to have company.”