“There’s one thing about it,” said Tom, as he scrambled into his clothing once more, “if Jack Harvey is as reckless and as careless in that canoe as he is in his yacht it will be washed up on shore some day without him. Not that I hope it will happen, but I look to see it.”
“I don’t think he was born to be drowned,” said Henry Burns.
Toward noon they came in sight of the southern extremity of the island, or the extremities, to speak more accurately, for the end of the island here was divided into a succession of thin points of land of various shapes, affording a number of small, rockbound harbours, snug and secluded, and each making good shelter for small vessels.
They selected one of these, and, as they knew the waters to be filled with a species of small cod, they determined to lay up here for the afternoon and night, starting out again the next morning. They brought the Spray well in to the head of the harbour which they selected, so that it was almost wholly land-locked when they dropped anchor and furled their sails.
Toward evening the wind decreased, dying out almost entirely. Big banks of clouds piling up in the northwest told them that they might expect the breeze from that quarter in the morning.
It was getting dusk and they were cooking their supper in the little cabin of the Spray, when young Joe, looking out of the companionway, exclaimed: “Why, here comes company; another yacht’s going to lie in here for the night, too.”
Looking out, they saw a big black sloop coming slowly into the harbour. She had come up from the southward before the wind, and had only her mainsail set. There was hardly breeze enough to bring her in. She drifted in slowly, with one man at her wheel, and, as she came within hailing distance, young Joe, going forward, swung his cap and shouted, “Ahoy.”
The man at the wheel did not respond, but, strangely enough, at the sound of young Joe’s voice the yacht slowly turned again, heading completely about, and stood out of the harbour again.
“Doesn’t seem to like our company,” said Henry Burns.
“Guess he’ll have to have it, whether he wants it or not,” said George Warren. “There’s not wind enough to take him out again, as he will find when he gets the set of the tide at the entrance.”