[THE CRUISE OF THE "GHOST."]
BY W. L. ALDEN,
Author of "The Moral Pirates," etc.
Chapter I.
The boys had talked all winter of the cruise which they hoped to take in a sail-boat during the coming summer, and they spent a great many Saturday afternoons at boat yards and places in New York, Jersey City, and Brooklyn, where sail-boats are laid up for the winter. They found several cat-boats that suited them very well, and that could be bought at a low price; but they did not find it so easy to convince Uncle John that a sail-boat cruise would be a safe enterprise for boys so young as Tom Schuyler, Jim and Joe Sharpe, and Harry Wilson. They did not say much about it to Mr. Schuyler, Mr. Sharpe, or Harry's father, for, as Joe pointed out, when Uncle John Wilson gave his consent, it would be time enough to speak to them. "If I go now," he said, "and ask father if I can go cruising in a cat-boat, he'll say, 'Most certainly not, my son; boys have no business with sail-boats.' But if Uncle John goes to him, and tells him all about it, he'll be perfectly satisfied, and say, 'My son, I think you had better do as Mr. Wilson suggests.'" Joe was quite right, for Mr. Sharpe, while he knew nothing about boats, had entire confidence in Mr. John Wilson's prudence and judgment; and though he would have been very apt to refuse to give his sons permission to go sailing—on any ordinary occasion—he would have consented to any plan proposed by so careful and trustworthy a man as Uncle John was known to be.
When the sail-boat cruise was first proposed to Uncle John, he was not inclined to think well of it. "You've been Moral Pirates in a row-boat," said he, "and now you want to try Moral Piracy in a sail-boat. To tell you the truth, boys, I don't half like the idea. To manage a sail-boat requires more coolness and judgment than boys generally have, so I don't think the Department will be able to put a sail-boat in commission this year."
It was not until Uncle John found that the water in the bays on the south side of Long Island, where Tom Schuyler wanted to cruise, was in nearly all places too shallow for drowning purposes, that he consented to say that he would "think about" the sail-boat plan. He thought about it for some time without seeing any good reason to approve of it. He told Tom that while it was true that the water in the bay was deep only in certain narrow steamboat channels, a sail-boat might capsize in one of these very channels. Besides, if one of the boys were to fall overboard, the sail-boat could not pick him up as quickly as he could be picked up were he to fall out of a row-boat. "After all," he added, "the real difficulty is that not one of you is accustomed to manage a sail-boat, and that is a difficulty which we can't get over."
The boys still continued to talk among themselves about their desired cruise, without giving up the hope that Uncle John would change his mind, and when spring came something happened that did make him change it. Tom received a letter from his friend Charley Smith, who was in the Naval Academy at Annapolis, saying that he would come and spend the months of July and August with him. Now Charley was a very fine fellow, nearly a year older than Tom. He had been two years at the Academy, and was already a good sailor. Tom immediately wrote to him and asked him how he would like to be captain of a sail-boat, and go on a cruise through the south bays. Charley was delighted with the plan, and wrote to his guardian—for he had no father nor mother—and easily obtained his consent.