Smith Ruel Perley
The Rival Campers Afloat: or, The Prize Yacht Viking

CHAPTER XII.
THE SURPRISE SETS SAIL AGAIN

The work on the Surprise had gone on famously, though it had been a hard task. The labour of cleaning her, inside and out, had been well begun down in the Thoroughfare, but there remained still much to be done after she had been floated up into the harbour of Southport.

First, the boys had brought her in on the beach, at a point a little way up the cove from the Warren cottage, where there was a break in the rocky shore, and a clean strip of sand extended back from the water’s edge. There they had raised her on blocks and shored her up so they could work to advantage.

They swarmed over and in and out of her then like ants in an ant-hill, every boy lending a hand, from the Warren brothers to the campers down below. They scrubbed and scraped her, inside and out, and washed her insides with soap and hot water.

Then, following Captain Sam’s advice, they built a fire on the shore and melted a kettle full of pitch and tar. When they had gone over the entire planking of the boat, setting up the nails that had slackened with the straining it had undergone, and had driven many new ones in between, Harvey, equipped with an enormous brush, and having taken up the cabin flooring, smeared the inner part of the boat’s planking with the tar and pitch, filling all the seams with it.

Then they went over the entire hull on the exterior, tightening it up, scraping, sandpapering, and rubbing until their hands were blistered and their arms ached. Then came the painting of the cabin and outer hull, and the scraping and varnishing of the decks. The mast and ballast they had brought up from the Thoroughfare. The latter, cleansed of its rust and given a coating of hot coal-tar, was ready to be stowed aboard. The mast, scraped and varnished till it glistened once more, had been carefully stepped and fastened above and below. The yacht Surprise, with clean, shining spars, with polished, glistening decks, and with hull spotless white, was ready once more for the water. Long before they had tested their work with innumerable buckets of water thrown aboard, and had found her tight and not a leak remaining.

Jack Harvey eyed the yacht admiringly, as he paused, half-way up the bank from where she stood. His companions in the day’s work had gone on ahead.

“She’s a fine old boat,” he said, “and she’s just as good as new. I’ve had a lot of fun in her, too. I’ll never have any more fun in the Viking than I’ve had in her, though the Viking is bigger and handsomer. I’d be satisfied with the Surprise if I hadn’t got the other one.”

The moment seemed almost opportune for the offer that followed.

“That’s a fine craft there,” cried a voice so close in Harvey’s ear that it made him jump, for he had been so lost in the admiration of the Surprise that he had not heard the sound of any one approaching. He turned quickly, and there was Mr. Carleton.

“Doesn’t look much as though she had been under water all winter, does she?” asked Harvey.

“I should say not,” replied Mr. Carleton. “Looks as though she was just out of the shipyard. I don’t see what you need of the Viking when you’ve got such a boat as this. You’d better let me hire the Viking from you for the rest of the summer.”

“Sorry,” replied Harvey, “but I can’t do it. You see, I’ve promised to let the crew have this boat, and they have set their hearts on it. I wouldn’t disappoint them now for a hundred dollars.”

“How about two hundred dollars?” suggested Mr. Carleton.

Harvey hesitated for a moment.

“No!” he cried, determinedly, “not for a thousand dollars. There! I’ve said it, and I mean it. I want the money bad enough, too. But the crew are going to have this boat. We’ve made all the arrangements, and we are using the Viking for fishing, and we’ve got to be off for another trip, too, for we have been about here, earning nothing, for quite awhile now.”

“I’ll give you eighteen hundred dollars if you will sell the Viking,” said Mr. Carleton.

Harvey shook his head stubbornly.

“No use,” he said. “But,” he added, “you can arrange with the crew to take you sailing easy enough when we aren’t around here. They’ll be glad to have you go.”

“Hm!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton. “Well, all right; but if you change your mind, let me know.

“When are you going to launch this one?” he added.

“Why, I think we’ll put her into the water this evening,” replied Harvey. “That is, if we don’t get a shower. The moon will be up and the tide right. That’s why we are coming away so early now. We’re going up to the Warren cottage to get out some Japanese lanterns, and get the cannon ready. When we launch her, we are going to run a line from the masthead to the stern, and hang a chain of the lanterns, light them, and tow the Surprise around to the wharf in style, and fire a salute. Then she’ll be ready for Captain Sam to fit the sails in the morning. Better come around and see the fun.”

“Will you all be over here?” inquired Mr. Carleton.

“The whole crowd,” answered Harvey.

“Then I’ll be on hand sure,” said Mr. Carleton – but added to himself, “if I don’t have something else to do.”

There seemed to be no prospect of anybody taking part in a launching on this particular evening, however, for the dark clouds that had warned Harvey spread over the sky, and a quickly gathering summer shower was soon upon them. Harvey hurried up to the Warren cottage for shelter, and Mr. Carleton started back on the run toward Captain Sam’s.

A rowboat or two out in the harbour put hurriedly in to shore. The occupant of one of these latter craft, scurrying in and dashing homeward, had, it seems, been noticed by Squire Brackett through his glass from his observation-tower.

“Harry,” he said, as that young man came into the house, somewhat red in the face and out of breath, “what were you doing just now out around the Viking? I saw you row out behind her, and it took you at least three minutes or more to come in sight again. You didn’t go aboard her, did you?”

“No, I didn’t go aboard,” replied Harry Brackett, sulkily.

“Well, see that you don’t,” said Squire Brackett, emphatically. “You might not mean any harm by it, but you’ve had some trouble with those boys already this summer, and they wouldn’t like having you aboard unless they invited you.”

“Hm! well, if I wait for that I’ll never step aboard that boat,” exclaimed Harry Brackett. “And what’s more, I don’t want to go aboard. I wouldn’t go if they asked me.”

Having thus declared himself, Harry Brackett bolted his supper and vanished.

The shower, of rapid approach, was of equally brief duration. It had begun raining big, splashing drops about half-past four o’clock. Now, an hour later, it was brightening again, the sun darting its rays forth from the breaking cloud-banks, and the rain-drops dripping only from eaves and tree-branches.

Henry Burns and Harvey were vastly elated. The launching need not be put off, for the evening would be fair. They left the Warren cottage and hurried down alongshore to where they had left their tender, rowed out to the Viking, and began their preparations for supper.

“Henry,” said Harvey, “there’s some sunlight left yet, and just enough breeze to dry the sails nicely before we leave. The sooner they are dried the less likely they are to mildew. Shall we run them up?”

“Yes, let’s be quick about it,” replied Henry Burns. “The fire’s ready for the biscuit.”

They seized the halyards, one the throat and the other the peak, and began hauling. The sail went up smartly – when, all at once, there was an ominous, ripping sound.

“Hold on!” cried Harvey, “something is caught.”

“Well, I should say there was!” exclaimed Henry Burns, when he had made his halyard fast, and started to examine. “Cracky! but there are two big tears in the sail.”

“I don’t see how that can be,” said Harvey, joining him. “It’s a stout, new mainsail.”

“Why, I see what did the mischief,” he exclaimed, the next moment. “The reefing-points are caught in two places. That’s funny. We shook all the reefs out the last time we brought her in.”

“Look and see if it’s funny,” said Henry Burns, quietly. “I suppose somebody thought it was funny. Those knots didn’t tie themselves.”

Harvey examined them, while his face reddened with anger.

“I’ll bet I could guess who did that!” he cried.

“We’ll attend to his case if you guess right,” responded Henry Burns.

The knots certainly could not have caught themselves. There had been design in the act. In two places along the sail, one of the points for the fourth reef had been tied with one of the first. The consequence of this was, that when the united strength of the boys had come to bear directly on these two places, instead of being exerted evenly along the entire sail, the canvas had given away.

Harvey clinched his fist for a moment, opened his lips, as though about to give vent to his anger, and then suddenly subsided, with an expression on his face that half-amused Henry Burns.

“Say, Henry,” he said, “I’ve played the same kind of a joke myself before this, so I guess I might as well grin and bear it. But,” he continued, doubling up his fist once more, “perhaps I won’t take it out of that young Harry Brackett just the same, if I find out he did it.”

Henry Burns smiled assent.

“Never mind,” he said. “We can mend the tears so they won’t show much.”

They untied the knots, raised the sail, and let it dry while they ate their supper.

“Say, Tim,” said Harvey, an hour later, as they stood on shore by Tom and Bob’s tent, where the campers from down below had also assembled, “will you do something for me?”

“Sure,” replied Little Tim. “What is it?”

“Well, we want you to stay out aboard the Viking while we go up the cove and get the Surprise off and float her around,” said Harvey. “You see, Henry and I have decided not to leave the Viking deserted at night after this – that is, unless we have to. But what we want to-night particularly is for you to stay aboard and keep watch, and see if you notice Harry Brackett around the shore or the wharf, looking off toward the Viking. He’s played us a fine trick, and made us tear our mainsail – that is, we think he did it. But whoever it was will probably be around to see if the trick worked. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No-o-o,” answered Tim; “but don’t fire the cannon till you get around the point.”

“We won’t,” said Harvey. “Here’s the key to the cabin.”

Little Tim rowed out aboard.

It seemed, however, as though his vigil was to be a fruitless one. Certainly, Harry Brackett failed to put in an appearance. Little Tim stretched himself out on the seat and waited impatiently.

“I don’t see what Jack wanted to make me stay here for,” he remarked, when eight o’clock had come and gone and it was close upon nine, and the moon was rising.

Presently, however, he sat up and listened. Yes, there was somebody rowing out from shore. Tim strained his eyes eagerly. Then shortly he made out a somewhat familiar figure.

“Hello, Mr. Carleton,” he called; “I thought they said you were going up to the launching.”

The man in the boat stopped rowing abruptly, and turned in his seat. But if he was surprised to find anybody aboard the Viking he did not show it.

“So I am,” he replied. “Don’t you want to go up with me?”

“Can’t do it,” replied Little Tim. “I’m on watch. You’d better hurry, though. The tide is about up. She’ll be afloat soon now.”

Mr. Carleton rowed away. But he was not over-impatient, it would seem, for he rowed leisurely. In fact, he did not get up to the place of the launching at all, but paused off the wharf and sat idly in the stern of his boat, smoking and enjoying the beauty of the rising moon.

The yacht Surprise was at last afloat in all its glory of new paint and shining spars. She came around the point presently, towed by two boats filled with the boys, the string of lanterns, with candles lighted, swaying almost dangerously in the night breeze. The rowers halted abreast the Viking, the report of the cannon rang out over the waters and up through the quiet town, and the Surprise, now at anchor, lay waiting for the morrow, when Captain Sam should stretch the sails.

“Great success, wasn’t it?” cried Tom Harris to the occupant of a rowboat that had drifted up to them.

“Great!” replied Mr. Carleton. “Great! Sorry I didn’t get over in time to see her go into the water.”

Mr. Carleton made up for his delinquency the next day, however, for he was on hand early, and was much interested in the work of Captain Sam. He knew something of reeving rigging, too, it seemed, and lent a hand now and then. Joe Hinman and the crew liked him better than ever for it.

He was down again after dinner, too, and ready as ever to be of assistance.

“Hello,” he said, looking over toward the Viking, “are the other chaps going to play truant this afternoon, and leave us to rig the Surprise? I see they’ve got sail up.”

“Oh, they’re off for a week’s fishing down among the islands,” said Joe. “Jack said for us to go ahead and run the Surprise as soon as Captain Sam gets her ready. There they start now. They’ve cast off.”

The Viking was, indeed, under way, with Henry Burns and Harvey and Tom and Bob waving farewell.

“Where are you bound?” called Mr. Carleton, springing to the rail and hailing the Viking.

“Down the bay, fishing,” answered Harvey.

“Great!” cried Mr. Carleton. “Bring her up a minute, and I’ll come aboard and make the trip with you.”

Harvey looked at Henry Burns inquiringly.

Henry Burns glanced back at Mr. Carleton, but without altering the course of the yacht.

“Good-bye,” he called, pleasantly. “Sorry, but we’ve got a full crew. Couldn’t pay you high enough wages, anyway. Next trip, perhaps. Good-bye, fellows.”

Mr. Carleton watched the yacht, footing it fleetly southward; and there was a look of genuine disappointment on his face.

“Never mind,” said Joe Hinman, “come along with us. We’re off for a little cruise ourselves, in the morning. We’d like to have you go.”

“No, thanks,” replied Mr. Carleton. “I think I will wait ashore this trip – yes, I will go, too,” he said in the next breath. “I tell you where we will go. We’ll sail down to Stoneland. I haven’t been down that far yet. I’m with you.”

“All right,” said Joe. As a matter of fact, he had not contemplated so long a trip until the sails had been fully stretched and fitted under Captain Sam’s eye. But there was something positive about Mr. Carleton’s assertion. He said it with an assurance that seemed to take it for granted that that settled it. So Joe good-naturedly acquiesced.

“By the way,” said Mr. Carleton the next morning, when they had met outside Rob Dakin’s store, “have you got a chart of these waters aboard?”

“No,” answered Joe. “Jack has all that stuff aboard the Viking. But we don’t need a chart around this bay, do we, fellows? Not to go as far as Stoneland even. We know the bay all right.”

“Well, I don’t doubt that,” responded Mr. Carleton; “but I like to see where I am sailing for my own information. I’ll get one in the store.”

Mr. Carleton providing not only a chart for the voyage, but a quantity of provisions as well, they set out in high feather. It certainly was a stroke of luck, now that Harvey’s pocket-money was low, to have so liberal a passenger.

He was an interested and discerning sailor, too, was Mr. Carleton. He had a sailor’s interest to read the depth of water on the chart as they sailed, and to note the points of land off at either hand, and the islands by name, as they went southward. And he traced it all accurately on the chart as they progressed, with a little pencilling, especially when they sailed between some small islands at the foot of Grand Island.

“I like to know where I am, don’t you?” he asked of Joe Hinman. “I may buy a yacht of my own down here some day.”

He was interested in the harbour of Stoneland, too, and in the town; and he took them all up to a store there and bought them bottled soda, and bought their supper the night of their arrival there – which was the second night after their departure from Southport.

Then, at his suggestion, they cruised a little way down the channel that was the thoroughfare out to sea, on the following morning, and would have liked to go farther, but that Joe Hinman declared they must be getting back, as the crew had an idea of doing some fishing on their own account, to help Harvey out with expenses.

“There!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton, as they headed about finally, “there’s our course by the chart, laid down as fine as you please. I’m going to give this chart to you – after I amuse myself with it awhile.”

But be it recorded that when the trip had been ended, several days later, Mr. Carleton did not leave the chart aboard the Surprise, but took it ashore with him.

CHAPTER XIII.
STORMY WEATHER

“Too bad we couldn’t take Carleton along with us,” said Harvey, as the yacht Viking, with all sail spread, was beating down the bay. “He ought to have asked us sooner. We might have managed to make room for him.”

“You mean, he ought to have said he was going sooner,” said Henry Burns, slyly.

“Oh, I suppose so,” replied Harvey, half-impatiently. “I see, you never will quite like our new friend. By the way, that reminds me, he wants to buy the Viking. He says he will give us eighteen hundred dollars. That’s the second offer we’ve had this summer.”

“Are you sure it isn’t the same one?” suggested Henry Burns.

“Why, of course it is,” cried Jack Harvey. “Sure enough, that’s what Harry Brackett was up to. He was buying for Mr. Carleton – just trying to show off, and make us think he had all that money.”

“That’s queer, too,” remarked Henry Burns, “that Mr. Carleton should try to buy the Viking after just that one short sail down the river.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Harvey; “he saw what the boat could do – at least, in smooth water. No, that wouldn’t quite answer, either. He must have heard about her from some of the fishermen over at Bellport.”

“Well, do you want to sell?” inquired Henry Burns.

“Not much!” replied Harvey, emphatically. “I know you don’t, either, although you don’t say so.”

“Well, that’s true; I’d rather not,” admitted Henry Burns.

The wind was light, and they had only reached Hawk Island by six o’clock. So, not caring to risk another experience making Loon Island Harbour in the night, they anchored, and sailed over the next morning. They had provided bait for two days’ fishing before they left Southport, so they stood on past Loon Island Harbour and ran out direct to the fishing-grounds.

They had a fair afternoon’s fishing, and also set two short pieces of trawl, for hake, a few fathoms off from one of the reefs. Captain Sam had provided them with these. They were long lines, each with about a hundred hooks attached at intervals by short pieces of line. At either end of the trawl-line was a sinker, and also a line extending to the surface of the water where it was attached to a buoy. This, floating conspicuously on the water, would mark the spot where the trawl had been set.

Baiting these many hooks all along the trawl with herring, bought for the purpose at Southport, they set them at a point lying between two reefs, in about twenty-five fathoms of water, where Will Hackett had informed them there was a strip of soft, muddy bottom, a feeding-ground frequented by these fish.

Then they ran in to harbour with their catch of cod, and took them up to the trader’s wharf.

“We’re going to have some hake for you, too,” said Henry Burns. “That is, we expect to. What are you paying for hake these days?”

The trader, Mr. Hollis, eyed the young fisherman with an amused expression.

“Going right into the business, aren’t you?” he said. “Well, I like to see you young fellows with some spunk. Don’t fetch in so many that I can’t handle ’em,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye; “and if you underrun your trawls twice a day, so the fish will come in here good and fresh, I’ll pay you half a cent a pound. You’ll find it some work, though, when the sea is running strong. Got to take the fish off the hooks in the morning, and then underrun again at evening and bait up all the hooks for the night’s catch.”

“We’ll do that all right,” responded Henry Burns. “We’ll bring them in fresh.”

They put in hard, busy days now, rising at the first of daylight and going outside as soon as the wind would allow. They had only one dory with which to tend the trawls, so two of the boys usually tended one, and then the other two took their turn. It proved, indeed, hard work when the sea was high.

If the night’s catch had been good, the trawls came up heavy; and there was ever the danger, with the pitching of the boat, of running one of the innumerable hooks into the hands. But they soon became expert at it, learning how to sit braced in the boat and hold the trawl with a firm grasp, so that it might not slip through the hands, and how to unhook the fish.

Then, when they had underrun both trawls, they would stand off in the Viking for a different feeding-ground for the cod, and fish until it was time to bait up the trawls for the night.

By degrees, they came to learn other feeding-grounds than the few Will Hackett had shown them, by following the little fleet; and they went now, occasionally, clear across the bay that lay between Loon Island and South Haven Island. This was often rough water, for they were at the very entrance to the bay, at the open sea, and the waves piled in heavily, even when the wind was light, showing there had been a disturbance far out. This took them to the shoal water in about the reefs at the foot of South Haven Island, a protected spot from the north, under the lee, but open to the full sweep of the sea from the south.

It was in this place at about five of the afternoon, on the fourth day following their arrival, that they experienced a sudden and startling change of weather.

They had gone out in the morning, with a light southerly breeze blowing, which had held steadily throughout the day. But now, near sundown, it had died away, so that they had weighed anchor and were about to beat back slowly across the bay, toward harbour.

They had scarcely got under way, however, when the wind, with extraordinary fickleness, fell off altogether, a strange and unusual calm succeeding.

“That’s queer!” exclaimed Harvey, glancing about with some apprehension. “Looks as though we were hung up here for the night. It won’t do to try to anchor near these reefs, and we can’t fetch bottom where we are. I guess we are in for a row of a mile to get under the lee of one of those little islands where we can lie safe.”

They were about half a mile out from the nearest line of reefs, floating idly on the long swells, with the sails flapping and the boom swinging inboard in annoying fashion.

Henry Burns groaned.

“Oh my!” he exclaimed. “What a beastly stroke of luck. I’m tired enough to turn in now. Don’t you suppose we’ll get a little evening breeze?”

“We may,” replied Harvey, “but there’s something queer in the way the wind dropped all of a sudden. I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of the breeze for to-day.”

But Jack Harvey’s prophecy was refuted with startling suddenness.

“Jack,” said Bob, almost the next moment, “there’s something queer about the water just along the line of the reefs and the shore back of them.”

He pointed, as he spoke, to a strange, white light that lay in a long, thin line just off the land, a half-mile ahead. It was almost ghostly, with a brilliant, unnatural whiteness. And, even as they gazed, its area rapidly extended and broadened.

Harvey shot a quick glance ahead. Then he sprang from the wheel and seized the throat-halyard.

“Get the peak – quick!” he cried to Bob. “Head her square as you can for the light, Henry. Tom, cast off the jib-halyards and grab the downhaul. It’s a white squall, I think.”

Henry Burns seized the wheel, while the two boys at the halyards let the mainsail go on the run. There was no steerageway on the Viking, as they had been drifting; but Henry Burns managed, by throwing the wheel over quickly and reversing it moderately, to swing the boat’s head a little.

They were not a moment too soon. Out of a clear, cloudless sky, there came suddenly rushing upon them a wind with such fury that, sweeping across the bow, it laid the yacht over; while there flew aboard, from the smother about the bow, a cloud of fine spray that nearly blinded them.

The Viking, its head thrown off by the squall, that struck the outer jib, which they had not been able to lower, careened alarmingly. Then Henry Burns brought her fairly before it, just as a sea began to roll aboard. The cockpit was ankle-deep with water; but they were scudding now safely out to sea, drenched to the skin, as the squall, whipping off the tops of the long rollers, filled all the air with a flying storm of spray.

The blast had fallen upon them so unexpectedly, and with such incredible quickness, that they scarce knew what had happened before they were running before it toward the open sea.

They got the hatches closed now, after Tom had dashed below and brought up the oilskins. True, they were soaked through and through, but the wind had a sharp, cold sting to it, and the oilskins would protect them from that. They got the outer jib down, too. Then, when they saw there was no immediate danger, as the Viking was acting well, they collected their wits and discussed, hurriedly, what they should do.

“My! but that was a close call,” said Bob. “How did you know what was coming, Jack?”

“I didn’t, exactly,” said Harvey. “But I’ve heard the fishermen tell of the white squalls, and I thought that was one.”

“Don’t they say they are worse when they come between tides?” asked Henry Burns, quietly.

“Seems to me they do,” answered Harvey. “I guess we’re in for it. Lucky we are running out to sea, instead of in on to a lee shore, though.”

“They don’t last long, I’ve heard say,” said Henry Burns. “We may be able to face it by and by, and work back; though it will be a long beat, by the way we are driving.”

They were, indeed, being borne onward with great force. Moreover, a quick transformation had taken place over the surface of the waters; for the fury of the squall, continuing as it did for some time from the west, had calmed the waves, and there was almost a smooth sea before them.

Then, presently, there came another strange alteration of the wind. The violence of the squall abated, and the breeze fell away again. But only for a brief length of time. As often happens, with the white squall as its forerunner, the wind now changed from the southerly of the morning and afternoon, to northeasterly; and already, as they proceeded to get sail again on the Viking, the water darkened away to the north and eastward, showing that a new breeze was coming from that quarter. They were fully two miles out to sea.

“Looks downright nasty, don’t it, Jack?” said Henry Burns. “Better reef, hadn’t we?”

“Yes, and in a hurry, too,” replied Harvey. “It’s coming heavy before long.”

“Here, you take the wheel,” said Henry Burns. “I’m quick at tying in reef-points. Come on, Tom. Bob will set the forestaysail. How many reefs do you want, Jack?”

“Two, I think,” replied Harvey. “We’ll watch her close, though. I’m afraid we shall need a third. But we’ll work her back as far as we can before we tie another. It’s growing dark, and we must make time.”

It was true, and ominously so. With the alteration of the wind the sky had darkened, and was becoming overcast. Night would soon be upon them, and a stormy one.

Nor had they beaten back more than a half-mile, in the teeth of the wind, before Harvey luffed and hauled the main-sheet in flat.

“We’ve got to put in a third reef,” he said, soberly. “We don’t need it quite yet, but we shall very soon, and we don’t want to have to reef out here in the night.”

They lowered the sail a little and tied in the reef, and the Viking stood on again. But already the sea was beginning to roll up heavily from the northeast, having a long sweep of water to become agitated in – the stretch of bay that lay between Loon and South Haven Islands. The wind had become a storm, a black, heavy nor’easter. In another half-hour, rain began to drive upon them.

But the good yacht Viking stood it well, and they had worked up to within about half a mile of the foot of Loon Island, though still a mile away from it out in the bay, when the wind and sea perceptibly increased.

“We can’t make the harbour,” muttered Harvey. “We’ll try for the little harbour at the head of the island.”

The inhabitants of Loon Island called that end the head which fronted seaward, and there was a good harbour there; that is, not what the fishermen called a “whole” harbour, protected on all quarters, but good as the wind now blew. They headed more to the eastward and stood up for that.

But when, at length, Harvey peered ahead, straining his eyes in the gathering darkness for a favourable moment to come about, he could see no apparent difference in the seas. They were all huge, and they beat over the bows of the Viking in one steady, dashing spray.

“She won’t do it,” said Harvey.

But he eased her and headed off, while the Viking rolled dangerously. Then he put the helm hard down.

“Ready, about,” he cried.

But his fears were realized. The seas were too heavy, with the sail that they could carry.

“Well, we’ll wear her about,” said Harvey. “Drop the peak, Henry; and climb to windward, boys, when the boom comes over.”

There was peril in this manœuvre, jibing a boat in such a sea and wind; but it was clearly the only thing to be done. There was scant sail on, with the peak lowered; and Harvey did the trick pluckily and sailor-fashion. The sheet was well in and the boat almost dead before the wind, before he threw the wheel over and let the wind catch the sail on the other side. The yacht came around against a flying wall of foam and spray, with the boys clinging for one moment to the weather rail, and throwing all their weight on that side. Then Tom and Henry Burns, with united strength, raised the peak of the sail, though it filled in the gale and was almost too much for them.