When the mate went below to put on some dry clothes, he looked at the tin clock, and discovered that the “Gazelle” had covered the distance between the two lights—sixteen miles—in about an hour and a quarter.
At Stumpy Bay they stopped to make a new gaff, and then, after a two days’ lay off there, they went on to Coin Jock, North Carolina.
A fleet of barges, loaded with watermelons, going through the canal leading through the Dismal Swamp, to Norfolk, offered to give the boys a tow—an invitation which they hastened to accept. Not till nine o’clock did the procession start, with the “Gazelle” at the end of the long line of boats. It was a dark, lowering night, and not a thing could the boys see of the country through which they were passing. The light of the boat ahead was their only guide.
The yacht was snapped to and fro on the end of the long line of boats like the end boy on a snap-the-whip string. About midnight the rain began to come down in a perfect deluge, and the word was passed aft to each boat to anchor till things cleared.
Though the boys could see little but the jagged outlines of the trees against the stormy sky, they voted the surroundings dismal enough to merit the name.
Just before daylight, the fleet got under way again, the little “Gazelle” tagging on behind like a reluctant boy hanging on to his mother’s hand when she takes him shopping.
At Norfolk Ransom and his shipmates found a goodly company of vessels of all sorts, all rigs, and every nationality. The red-and-black storm flag was flying from every signal station along the coast, and the vessels had hastened to cover in Hampton Roads and Norfolk harbor.
Returning from the Post Office, where Kenneth and the mate found a goodly batch of precious home letters awaiting them, they had great difficulty in making headway against the gale that was already blowing. The anchorage reached, they realized anew how cosey and comfortable the “Gazelle’s” cabin was.
“Let’s have a watermelon in honor of—well—to celebrate this occasion.” It was Arthur, of course, who suggested this.
“In honor of what occasion?” Frank winked at the skipper.