It seemed ages before any one appeared; then the face of the captain showed itself. He immediately grasped the situation, and in the nick of time threw a long line to them. Arthur caught it and made it fast, while the captain did likewise on the schooner. Once more the “Gazelle” was saved; she swung on the end of the long rope like the cork on a fish line.
For a week the storm continued; so for many days the captain and crew of the yacht had nothing to do but go sightseeing, to write letters, and play games. Whenever the weather permitted, “His Nibs” was brought alongside, and one or two of the boys went ashore.
On one side of the narrow harbor was Norfolk, one of the big and growing cities of the South. Her docks were filled with ocean-going and coast-wise craft, steamers, and sailing vessels of every rig. Situated on a fine harbor, a point from which railroads radiated, within easy reach of the coal fields and iron mines, and but a short distance from the great ship-building yards at Newport News, it prospered exceedingly. There was little about it that suggested the Southern city, except the multitude of colored people that roamed the streets. Across the stream-like harbor lay Portsmouth, a much smaller place, on a lower scale of development. In its Navy Yard many of the ships that did such good service during the war with Spain were fitted out. Then its shops were kept going day and night; the workmen swarmed like bees in and out of the buildings; and the place resounded with the loud gong-like ring of blows on cavernous boilers, and the sharp tap-tap of the riveters. It was quite different when the boys visited it; many of the shops were closed, and the marines, clad from head to foot in rubber, who paced to and fro in front of the old stone buildings had little to do, for there were few frolicsome jackies to make trouble for them.
Kenneth, Arthur, and Frank visited the shipping, the oyster markets, where hundreds of the trim oyster sloops and schooners were unladen weekly, the Navy Yard; St. Paul’s, the old stone church, built in 1739, which still bore high in its tower the round shot fired into it during the War of 1812, and last, but far from least, the watermelon fleet.
“How’s business?” they inquired interestedly.
“Rotten,” was the reply, and the truth of it was evident in the piles of discarded fruit about.
Great, luscious melons were selling at $3.50 per hundred, and buyers were hard to find at that. Whether the boys went singly or by twos, they always returned laden to their utmost capacity with the great green fruit.
The tenth day after their arrival at Norfolk, Kenneth got up early and in a voice fit to wake the dead, roared: “Up all hands, break yourselves out of your bunks there. This is the day we ‘move de boat’; up all hands.”
The other two got up yawning and stretching, to find the sun streaming warmly through the lights. Breakfast was cooked and eaten, dishes washed and put away, decks scrubbed, brass rubbed, and rigging examined. The bugler aboard the U.S.S. “Texas,” anchored but a short distance off, was just blowing reveille when the boys began to heave on the anchor cable. But it was long after the shrill boatswain’s call to mess had sounded aboard the “Texas” before the “Gazelle’s” crew gave up the task of hauling aboard the anchor. The boys hauled and tugged, till it seemed as if the bow of the “Gazelle” would be pulled down to keep company with the anchor, but not an inch would it budge. It was provoking that when wind and tide favored, and pleasant weather promised, they should be held to land. Kenneth stood with frowning brows looking along the straight cable, while the perspiration stood in beads on his face—gazing as if he would pierce the green-brown flood with his glance, and see what held the mud-hook fast. Arthur and Frank stood by silent and hot—for the sun beat down fiercely; all three were dry of suggestions, for everything had been tried.
“Oh, let’s try once more; then if the pesky thing won’t come up we’ll cut adrift and leave it.” Kenneth was at the end of his patience.