Chapter VIII
In Which An Expected Comedy Proves To Be a Tragedy
I knew well enough that my cousin, Paul Downes, was too thoroughly scared by my threat to have him arrested for assault, to openly make an attack upon either my boat or myself. But his money could bribe such fellows as I had seen him with that very day, to sink the Wavecrest, or even to assault me in the dark.
It would be a joke on Paul—so I thought—if he or his friends should sneak out to the sloop where she was moored, intending to do her some harm, and find me there all ready for such a visitation. I chuckled to myself while I wended my way to the shore, carrying a single oar with me, and unlocked the padlock of the chain which fastened my rowboat to the landing.
There was nobody about, and I pushed out and sculled over to the Wavecrest without being interfered with. Had I not known so well just where the sloop lay I declare I would have had trouble in finding her. It was the darkest kind of a night and it did blow great guns! The rain pelted as sharp as hail and before I got half way to the sloop I decided that I wasn’t showing very good sense, after all, in coming out here on such a night. I didn’t think Paul and his friends would venture forth in such a storm.
However, having once set out to do a thing I have usually run the full course. I am not sure that it is natural perseverance in my case, but fear that I am more often ashamed to be considered fickle. So I sculled on to the Wavecrest and prepared to go aboard.
But just here I bethought me that if my cousin should attempt to board the sloop he would be warned that I was aboard by the presence of the tender. Therefore I snubbed the nose of the rowboat up short to the float, and then, after getting into the bows of the Wavecrest I let go her cable and paid out several yards so that the float and the tender were both out of sight in the darkness.
I chuckled then, as I crept aft to the cockpit and unlocked the door of the little cabin. Once inside, out of the rain, I drew curtains before all the lights and then lit the lamp over the cabin table. There were four berths, two on each side, with lockers fore and aft. Altogether the cabin of the Wavecrest was cozy and not a bad place at all in which to spend a night.
It was still early in the evening. The tide had not long since turned and was running out, while the wind out of its present quarter was with the tide. Any craft could sail out of Bolderhead harbor this night with both gale and sea in its favor; but heaven help the vessel striving to beat into the inlet! The reefs and ledges along this coast are as dangerous as any down on the charts.