Chapter Five.
Bath Bay Lesson—The Midnight Council.
June came before we had made acquaintance with all the corners of our little new world. Every day it grew in interest to us, and, with the increasing fine weather, was the most beautiful spot on earth in our eyes. Once a week one of us was allowed to go over to the town with Clump, in his rowboat, and get letters from the post-office. That opportunity was always improved to purchase stores of groceries and other requisites. Each one’s turn to be commissary only came once in five weeks.
Clump enjoyed those trips as much as we did. He would have meat or other things to get for the table, but would always reach the boat first in returning, and when he saw his “young master?”—as he called each of us boys—coming down the wharf loaded with a week’s supply of various things, the old darky would commence to grin and slap his sharp knees, the slaps growing quicker and the grin breaking into “yha! yha! yhi!” as we drew near enough to show him our different purchases.
There was always a new pipe or a paper of tobacco for Clump, which he would lay on the seat beside him, and then put out the oars and pull with long, slow sweeps for our neck, each swing accompanied by a grunt, which, however, did not break the conversation he carried on, chiefly telling us stories of my father when he came as a boy, which often lasted till we reached our destination. Many a frolic and adventure would he thus relate with great gusto, and he had generally, too, some remembrance of my grandfather to repeat.
About the twentieth of June, the water was warm enough to allow us to bathe, and then began that exercise, the most useful and most wholesome, and perhaps among the most manly that a boy can practise.
Walter and both the Higginsons could swim. Drake and I were beginners. Captain Mugford was our teacher. He chose a little bay within, as it were, the large bay on the neck end of our cape. Bath Bay, as we named it, was about two hundred and fifty yards long, and sixty to seventy yards wide. Its shores were rocks, except at its bow end, where a soft beach sloped gradually for forty feet from the shore. About fifteen feet beyond our depth the Captain had anchored a stationary staging, which was merely an old flatboat caulked and floored over. It had steps and ropes from its sides, and was intended as the first object to reach and rest on when we had learned to swim a dozen or more strokes. Farther on, halfway the length of Bath Bay, was a large flat rock, which stood at high-tide two feet above water. Its sides were almost perpendicular, and were made accessible in the same way as “Youngster’s Wharf.” By that name those who could already swim called our staging near the beach. Leander’s Rock, for we had a name for everything, had a depth of nearly thirty feet, and a finer place for diving cannot be imagined. Bath Bay was shut in by its wall-like sides and a bluff behind the sand-beach from all the severe winds, but after a storm out at sea we would get an even swell that was very pleasant to float on.
Our time for bathing was between the close of school at half-after one and our dinner-hour, three. All through the season, until early in October, we never lost a bath unless rain was falling heavily, so greatly did we enjoy it under the Captain’s care. He would not have bathing-houses for us, as he said that the sun-bath after a swim was almost as good as the salt water itself. The Captain was always near the swimmers, in his punt, that in case of accident his assistance might be immediate.