Just as he spoke, a blast of wind slipped by the grain boat, caught the yacht, and slammed the boom over with terrific force. Kenneth expected to see the masts go out of her; but everything held, and she raced along the side of the sunken ironclad, luffed up under her stern, and lay quivering, but safe.
The “Gazelle” sailed up the narrow passage on the starboard side of the wreck, while the steamer passed to port. The yacht ran the rapids successfully, and was soon speeding along over Lake Huron with an offshore beam wind. The sixty miles to the Government harbor of refuge at Harbor Beach, was covered at nightfall.
The next night brought them to the entrance of Saginaw Bay. So far the winds had been favorable and the water smooth, and the boys made daily steps sixty miles long in their journey towards home.
They longed for home with a desire that amounted to an ache. Neither would admit to the other how much he felt; but it was hard sometimes to keep the tears back as something occurred to bring up visions of the little city on the bluff.
Saginaw Bay had a bad reputation. Storms were apt to bluster about its wide mouth, and strong winds were continually blowing across it.
Though the low barometer indicated that bad weather was coming, Kenneth decided that he could not wait, and he pushed on across the treacherous bay. At night, and in a place noted for its stormy weather, with bad weather threatening, it may have been foolhardy to attempt the run; but the spirit that lay behind the “Gazelle’s” motto—“Keeping everlastingly at it brings success”—made the retracing of their steps to a safe harbor a thing dead against the boys’ principles.
For once, the reputation of the locality seemed to be false; even the glass appeared to be at fault, for the wind scarcely amounted to a summer zephyr, and the waves were long and smooth.
The other boys were yawning, and at ten-thirty Kenneth sent them below, promising to call them if need be. The skipper sat with the tiller over his knees, thinking. There was but little to do—a glance at the sails to see if all was drawing well, and an occasional look out for other craft was all the attention the business in hand required. For almost twelve long months he and his friends had lived aboard the little craft they had learned to think of as a second home—through strange waters, along unfamiliar shores, experiencing all conditions of climate, and seeing all sorts of people. Dangers innumerable had been encountered and passed safely, and now Kenneth said to himself: “We are almost home.” The trip was well worth while, he thought; he had gleaned information that he believed he could not have secured any other way, and his sketch book was full of plans of all sorts of craft he had inspected.
In almost perfect silence, surrounded by darkness, he sat thinking and dreaming. A vision bright as a picture appeared in his mind’s eye, and in it he saw his future career. A builder of swift steamers and sturdy cargo boats, of sailing craft of every rig, and all was good.
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that for a time he did not notice the ominous silence, the fitful, light puffs of wind that lapsed between the calms, the sticky feeling in the air, the many signs which bespeak a brewing storm. Not till the mainsail flapped in answer to a change in direction of the fitful wind did the skipper realize that trouble was coming. In an instant, the long vistas of his pleasant dreams disappeared, and he became the sailor of a small boat off a dangerous coast, with a storm threatening.