Then he climbed aboard and finished the furling of the sails, while Reube rolled convulsively in the bottom of the boat, unable to control his laughter. He recovered himself only when Will trod upon him without apology, and threatened to put him overboard.
When the sails had been made snug, and the pinkie bailed out, and the mud cleaned with pains from Will’s face and hair and garments, there was nothing to do but watch the Dido in the distance and wait for the tide to fall. In another half hour, or a little more, only a waste of red flats and yellow pools separated the two stranded boats. Reube took off his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers up high, and stepped overboard. These precautions were for Will superfluous; so he went as he was, and congratulated himself on being able to defy all hidden clam shells. Before he went, however, he took the precaution to put out the pinkie’s anchor, for which Reube derided him.
“The pinkie’s no Western stern-wheeler, to navigate a field of wet grass!” said he. “I fancy she’ll wait here till next tide all right!”
“Yes—but then?” queried Will, laconically.
“Then,” replied Reube, “we’ll come back for her with the Dido.”
“There’s lots one never knows!” said Will, as he looked carefully to the anchor rope. And as things turned out it was well he did so—a fact which Reube had to acknowledge penitently.
The distance between the stranded boats was little more than a quarter of a mile, yet it took the boys some time to traverse it. The bottom of the cove was for the most part a deep and clinging ooze, which took them to the knee at every step, and held their feet with the suction of an airpump. Here and there were patches of hard sand to give them a moment’s ease; but here and there, too, were the dreaded “honey pots” for which that part of the coast is noted, and to avoid these they had to go most circumspectly. The “honey pot” is a sort of quicksand in which sand is replaced by slime—a bottomless quagmire which does its work with inexorable certainty and deadly speed. Both Reube and Will knew the strange, ominous olive hue staining the red mud over the mouths of these traps, but they knew, also, that all signs sometimes fail, so they took the boathook with them and prodded their path cautiously. At last, after wading a long, shallow lagoon, the bottom of which was thick with shells, and unfriendly to Reube’s bare feet, they reached the runaway Dido.
Breathless with anxiety, Reube climbed over the side, suddenly imagining all sorts of damage and defilement. But his darling was none the worse for her involuntary cruise. She had shipped some muddy water, but that was all that Reube could grumble at. Gandy had been too shrewd to do anything that might look like malice aforethought. In a trice the trim craft was bailed out and sponged dry. Then Will admired her critically from stem to stern, from top to keel, asking a thousand learned questions by the way, and feeling almost persuaded to build a boat himself. But even this interesting procedure came to an end, and at length the comrades threw themselves down on the cuddy roof, and realized that they were hungry. It was long past their dinner time. The tide was not yet at its lowest ebb, and it would be four or five hours ere they could hope to get the boats again afloat.
The only thing they had to eat was a pocketful of dried dulse which Reube had brought with him. This they devoured, and it made them very thirsty. They decided to go ashore and look for a spring. Far away, on the crest of the upland, were some houses, at which they gazed hungrily, but the idea of leaving the Dido and the pinkie for any such long jaunt was not to be entertained for a moment. As they again stepped out into the mud Will repeated the precaution which he had taken in regard to the pinkie. He put out the little anchor, and paid no heed to Reube’s derision. To be sure, Reube was both owner and captain, but Will stood not on ceremony.
Not far from high-water mark our thirsty explorers found a clear, cold spring bubbling out from beneath a white plaster rock. The water was very hard, carrying a great deal of lime in solution, and Will lectured learnedly on the bad effect it would have upon their stomachs if they drank much of it. As usually happens, however, this theorizing had small force against the very practical fact of their thirst. So they drank till they were perfectly satisfied, and were afterward none the worse. This, Will insisted, was thanks to the abundance of sorrel which they found amid the grass near by, whose acid was kind enough to neutralize the lime which they had swallowed.