“We’ll have to lay her up and scrape her then,” was Kenneth’s determined reply. He could not have his craft beaten like that, without a protest.
The cause of all this dissatisfaction flew by like the shadow of a swiftly moving cloud. Her masts were raked sharply aft, and her two enormous leg-o’-mutton sails were out of all proportion to her beam, the boys thought. The hull was built of several—five or six—large logs hollowed out and cleverly joined with peculiarly shaped wooden pegs that held the connecting logs closely together. It was a new sort of craft to Ransom, and his respect for the Chesapeake Bay fisherman increased as he realized the careful seamanship required to keep a “Bugeye” right-side up. Past the mouth of the Potomac River, which led directly to the national capital, sailed the three boys, though they longed with all their might for a sight of Washington, and it took all their resolution to keep headed up the bay. Old Annapolis, the seat of the Naval Academy, and the place where so many naval heroes have been educated, was left without a visit; but each boy promised himself that he would return and see everything some time. The names Dewey, Sampson, Schley, Evans, Philip, Hobson, and a host of others were on everybody’s tongue at that time, and yet the three young mariners (so pressed for time were they) could not visit the place where these great men were educated.
BEAUFORT, NORTH CAROLINA.
POPLAR TREES BENT OVER BY THE WIND.
A “BUGEYE.”
“FLEW BY LIKE THE SHADOW OF A SWIFTLY MOVING CLOUD.”
Just before reaching Chesapeake City, the yacht was beached, and when the tide receded, the boys found barnacles and sea moss to the thickness of three-fourths of an inch or more on its bottom. The planking beneath, however, was as sound as could be, and showed not a sign of the many terrific strains to which it had been subjected.
At Chesapeake City the yacht entered the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the Haul Over Canal, as it is generally called.
Kenneth was told that he would have to pay eleven dollars for the privilege of passing through the lock and for the hire of five mules to tow the yawl through.
“But I don’t want a tow through,” he protested.