"Sam," said Pete, "let the sail swing right out. You and I'll have to row till we get out of the creek."
"No, you won't—not with this breeze," growled the Captain. "Give me the ropes. We'll dance right along."
"He knows how to handle a boat, Sam," said Pete. "He can get out all there is in her."
Right at the shore of the mainland there was a kind of small shut-in harbor. It had a rickety old wharf, at which the boat had been fastened. Other boats were there, hitched a little way out from the wharf. Some of them were pretty good sized sailing-boats. Straight across the harbor, the patch of open water in front of the wharf, was a wide reach of rushes, and among them wound the narrow crooked ribbon of water that Pete called "the creek." Outside were the dancing waves of the bay, and there was bright sunshine everywhere.
If it was all a kind of every-day affair to Pete, it was not so to his friend, and Sam's eyes were glistening with excitement. "Ain't I glad I met you!" seemed to almost burst from him; but Pete's reply was uttered in a very matter-of-fact tone.
"You'd better be glad that Captain Kroom came. We wanted a boat, too, but it's the best kind of luck to have a man that knows fish. I've known lots of fellows like you come out here to fish, and that didn't catch a thing."
"Up with her!" shouted the Captain, and in a moment the sail was full.
In spite of the two boys forward, the boat was inclined to lift its nose, but away it went slipping into the creek, and making swift headway along the crooks and turns among the rushes.
The steering and the management of the sail were all in the hands of the old fisherman. It almost seemed as if the wind must be, too. There was enough of that, and the boat went this way, that way, so far as Sam could see, with very little regard to the direction the breeze came from. He said so to Pete.
"Guess so," replied the 'longshore boy. "He knows his boat. So long as a wind isn't dead ahead, he doesn't care. But he hates oars. So do I."