"Can't we make a cruise in her?" said Ford.
"Any time. Ham lets me use her whenever I like. She's fast enough, but she's built so she'll stand most anything. Safe as a house if she's handled right."
"Handled!"
Ford Foster's expression of face would have done honor to the Secretary of the Navy, or the chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee in Congress, or any other perfect seaman, Noah included. It seemed to say: "As if any boat could be otherwise than well sailed with me on board."
Dabney, however, even while he had been talking, had been hauling in from its "float and grapnel," about ten yards out at low water, the very stanch-looking little yawl-boat that called him owner. She was just such a boat as Mrs. Kinzer would naturally have provided for her boy,—stout, well made and sensible,—without any bad habits of upsetting, or the like. Not too large for Dabney to manage all alone, the "Jenny," as he called her, and as the name was painted on the stern, was all the better off for having two on board.
"The inlet's pretty narrow for a long reach through the marsh," said Dabney, "and as crooked as a ram's-horn. I'll steer and you pull till we're out o' that, and then I'll take the oars."
"I might as well row out to the crab-grounds," said Ford, as he pitched his coat forward and took his seat at the oars. "All ready?"
"Ready," said Dab, and the "Jenny" glided gracefully away from the landing with the starting push he gave her.
Ford Foster had had oars in his hands before, but his experience must have been limited to a class of vessels different from the one he was in now.
He was short of something, at all events. It may have been skill, and it may have been legs, or discretion; but, whatever was lacking, at the third or fourth stroke the oar-blades went a little too deeply below the smooth surface of the water; there was a vain tug, a little out of "time," and then there was a boy on the bottom of the boat, and a pair of well-polished shoes lifted high in the air.