TOM FIGHTS IT OUT

Fortunately there was a breeze, rather light but sufficient, when the sun rose next morning. The Hunkydory was cast off and, with Cal at the tiller, her sails filled, she heeled over and “slid on her side,” as Tom described it, out of the Ashley River and on down the harbor where the wind was so much fresher that all the ship’s company had to brace themselves up against the windward gunwale, making live ballast of themselves.

The course was a frequently changing one, because the Rutledge boys wanted their guests to pass near all the points of interest, and also because they wanted Dick Wentworth, who was the most expert sailor in the company, to study the boat’s sailing peculiarities. To that end Dick went to the helm as soon as the wind freshened, and while following in a general way the sight-seeing course suggested by the Rutledges, he made many brief departures from it in order to test this or that peculiarity of the boat, for, as Larry explained to Tom, “Every sailing craft has ways of her own, and you want to know what they are.”

After an hour of experiment, Dick said:

“We’ll have to get some sand bags somewhere. We need more ballast, especially around the mast. As she is, she shakes her head too much and is inclined to slew off to leeward.”

“Let me take the tiller, then, and we’ll get what we need,” answered Larry, going to the helm.

“Where?”

“At Fort Sumter. I know the officer in command there—in fact, he’s an intimate friend of our family,—and he’ll provide us with what we need. How much do you think?”

“About three hundred pounds—in fifty pound bags for distribution. Two hundred might do, but three hundred won’t be too much, I think, and if it is we can empty out the surplus.”

“How on earth can you tell a thing like that by mere guess work, Dick?” queried Tom in astonishment.

“It isn’t mere guess work,” said Dick. “In fact, it isn’t guess work at all.”

“What is it, then?”

“Experience and observation. You see, I’ve sailed many dories, Tom, and I’ve studied the behavior of boats under mighty good sea schoolmasters—the Gloucester fishermen—and so with a little feeling of a boat in a wind I can judge pretty accurately what she needs in the way of ballast, just as anybody who has sailed a boat much, can judge how much wind to take and how much to spill.”

“I’d like to learn something about sailing if I could,” said Tom.

“You can and you shall,” broke in Cal. “Dick will teach you on this trip, and Larry and I will act as his subordinate instructors, so that before we get back from our wanderings you shall know how to handle a boat as well as we do; that is to say, if you don’t manage to send us all to Davy Jones during your apprenticeship. There’s a chance of that, but we’ll take the risk.”

“Yes, and there’s no better time to begin than right now,” said Dick. “That’s a ticklish landing Larry is about to make at Fort Sumter. Watch it closely and see just how he does it. Making a landing is the most difficult and dangerous thing one has to do in sailing.”

“Yes,” said Cal; “it’s like leaving off when you find you’re talking too much. It’s hard to do.”

The little company tarried at the fort only long enough for the soldiers to make and fill six canvas sand bags. When they were afloat again and Dick had tested the bestowal of the ballast, he suggested that Tom should take his first lesson at the tiller. Sitting close beside him, the more expert youth directed him minutely until, after perhaps an hour of instruction, during which Dick so chose his courses as to give the novice both windward work and running to do, Tom could really make a fair showing in handling the sails and the rudder. He was still a trifle clumsy at the work and often somewhat unready and uncertain in his movements, but Dick pronounced him an apt scholar, and predicted his quick success in learning the art.

They were nearing the mouth of the harbor when Dick deemed it best to suspend the lesson and handle the boat himself. The wind had freshened still further, and a lumpy sea was coming in over the bar, so that while there was no danger to a boat properly handled, a little clumsiness might easily work mischief.

The boys were delighted with the behavior of the craft and were gleefully commenting on it when Larry observed that Tom, instead of bracing himself against the gunwale, was sitting limply on the bottom, with a face as white as the newly made sail.

“I say, boys, Tom’s seasick,” he called out. “We’d better put about and run in under the lee of Morris Island.”

“No, don’t,” answered Tom, feebly. “I’m not going to be a spoil-sport, and I’ll fight this thing out. If I could only throw up my boots, I’d be all right. I’m sure it’s my boots that sit so heavily on my stomach.”

“Good for you, Tom,” said Larry, “but we’ll run into stiller waters anyhow. We don’t want you to suffer. If you were rid of this, I’d—”

He hesitated, and didn’t finish his sentence.

“What is it you’d do if I weren’t playing the baby this way?”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t,” protested Tom, feeling his seasickness less because of his determination to contest the point. “What is it you’d do? You shall do it anyhow. If you don’t, I’ll jump overboard. I tell you I’m no spoil-sport and I’m no whining baby to be coddled either. Tell me what you had in mind.”

“Oh, it was only a sudden thought, and probably a foolish one. I was seized with an insane desire to give the Hunkydory a fair chance to show what stuff she’s made of by running outside down the coast to the mouth of Stono Inlet, instead of going back and making our way through Wappoo creek.”

“Do it! Do it!” cried Tom, dragging himself up to his former posture. “If you don’t do it I’ll quit the expedition and go home to be put into pinafores again.”

“You’re a brick, Tom, and you shan’t be humiliated. We’ll make the outside trip. It won’t take very long, and maybe you’ll get over the worst of your sickness when we get outside.”

“If I don’t I’ll just grin and bear it,” answered Tom resolutely.

As the boat cleared the harbor and headed south, the sea grew much calmer, though the breeze continued as before. It was the choking of the channel that had made the water so “lumpy” at the harbor’s mouth. Tom was the first to observe the relief, and before the dory slipped into the calm waters of Stono Inlet he had only a trifling nausea to remind him of his suffering.

“This is the fulfillment of prophecy number one,” he said to Cal, while they were yet outside.

“What is?”

“Why this way of getting into Stono Inlet. You said our programme was likely to be ‘changed without notice,’ and this is the first change. You know it’s nearly always so. People very rarely carry out their plans exactly.”

“I suppose not,” interrupted Larry as the Stono entrance was made, “but I’ve a plan in mind that we’ll carry out just as I’ve made it, and that not very long hence, either.”

“What is it, Larry?”

“Why to pick out a fit place for landing, go ashore, build a fire, and have supper. Does it occur to you that we had breakfast at daylight and that we’ve not had a bite to eat since, though it is nearly sunset?”

As he spoke, a bend of the shore line cut off what little breeze there was, the sail flapped and the dory moved only with the tide.

“Lower away the sail,” he called to Cal and Dick, at the same time hauling the boom inboard. “We must use the oars in making a landing, and I see the place. We’ll camp for the night on the bluff just ahead.”

“Bluff?” asked Tom, scanning the shore. “I don’t see any bluff.”

“Why there—straight ahead, and not five hundred yards away.”

“Do you call that a bluff? Why, it isn’t three feet higher than the low-lying land all around it.”

“After you’ve been a month on this coast,” said Cal, pulling at an oar, “you’ll learn that after all, terms are purely relative as expressions of human thought. We call that a bluff because it fronts the water and is three feet higher than the general lay of the land. There aren’t many places down here that can boast so great a superiority to their surroundings. An elevation of ten feet we’d call high. It is all comparative.”

“Well, my appetite isn’t comparative, at any rate,” said Tom. “It’s both positive and superlative.”

“The usual sequel to an attack of seasickness, and I assure you—”

Cal never finished his assurance, whatever it was, for at that moment the boat made her landing, and Larry, who acted as commander of the expedition, quickly had everybody at work. The boat was to be secured so that the rise and fall of the tide would do her no harm; wood was to be gathered, a fire built and coffee made.

“And I am going out to see if I can’t get a few squirrels for supper, while you fellows get some oysters and catch a few crabs if you can. Oh, no, that’s too slow work. Take the cast net, Cal, and get a gallon or so of shrimps, in case I don’t find any squirrels.”

“I can save you some trouble and disappointment on that score,” said Cal, “by telling you now that you’ll get no squirrels and no game of any other kind, unless perhaps you sprain your ankle or something and get a game leg.”

“But why not? How do you know?”

“We’re too close to Charleston. The pot-hunters haven’t left so much as a ground squirrel in these woods. I have been all over them and so I know. Better take the cartridges out of your gun and try for some fish. The tide’s right and you’ve an hour to do it in.”

Larry accepted the suggestion, and rowing the dory to a promising spot, secured a dozen whiting within half the time at disposal.

Supper was eaten with that keen enjoyment which only a camping meal ever gives, and with a crackling fire to stir enthusiasm, the boys sat for hours telling stories and listening to Dick’s account of his fishing trips along the northern shores, and his one summer’s camping in the Maine woods.