Still the good yacht sped on swiftly, steadily, like a great tireless bird. To starboard the boys could see nothing but the same old sea; the same, but always changing, always new. To port, the land was fringed with white tossing breakers, and beyond that forests of trees, graceful palms, and sturdy live oaks, with their branches draped in swaying moss, made a background of exquisite beauty.
Here and there a veritable giant that had lost in its battle with the elements, rose up above the rest, bare, denuded and black, but a sturdy relic still.
After a four-hours’ trick at the stick, Kenneth gave up the helm to Arthur and went below to write up his log. For a time the other two boys could see him laboring with a pen at the big, ledger-like book, intent on doing what he considered his duty; but his hand travelled slowly, then more slowly still. He looked up to get ideas, glanced through the oval port lights, now shut in by a green wall of sunlit water, or giving a sudden glimpse of blue cloud-flecked sky and palm-clad land over the heaving waters. For a time he gazed, then, frowning, grasped his pen determinedly, and set to work again. A dozen lines, perhaps, were written, then his eyes were irresistibly drawn again to the ever-changing pictures of sea and sky in the oval frames.
“Better give it up, old man,” Frank shouted down the hatch, laughing. “Save your log till you can’t do anything else, or until it’s too dark to see. This is better than a hundred logs. Come on deck and see it all. You can tell about it later.”
“I can’t resist; that’s a fact,” Kenneth answered, coming on deck. “This beats anything I ever even heard of. Don’t the old boat sail through, though? Steady as a church—skates up and down the waves as if she enjoyed it.”
The boys went below only to eat. Frank and Kenneth washed dishes, because Arthur was sailing—this was according to the unwritten law, that the one who sailed was excused from house work, light or otherwise. The cook did not have to wash dishes, though he was perfectly welcome to do so if he desired.
The boys saw the sun rise that morning, and it was shedding its last glowing rays over the restless waters when they made the harbor of St. Joseph’s Bay. “Eighty miles in one day is not bad going for a thirty-foot boat,” said Ransom, exultingly, after measuring the charts.
ON THE GULF COAST.
“GRACEFUL PALMS AND STURDY LIVE OAKS.”
“Sure not,” chimed in Arthur. “If we could do that every day, the rest of the cruise would be an easy thing.”