THE FIRST EVENT

It was late in the afternoon before the first sails of the returning fleet appeared in the channel. All day long the girls had been honored guests of the Orienta Club, and had enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Although both Mrs. Vaughan and the Commodore were away on board the Adventure, the other members and their wives had all heard about the yacht club over on Lost Island, and were happy to meet the girls, and see that they had a pleasant day of it.

“I think,” said Mrs. Allison, the chairman of the reception committee for regatta week, “I think it would be nice for you to meet your competitors in the race, the girls of the Junior Club. Let me see how it can be best managed? There are six, no, eight, in your club, and nine in the Juniors. Dorothy, will you just press that button behind you, dear?” She smiled around at the circle of interested faces. “We will call the club steward, and you may have a luncheon all by yourselves and get acquainted.”

So it was arranged. Instead of the “girl element,” as the Doctor laughingly dubbed the rival clubs, eating luncheon in the large dining-hall with the other guests and members, they were given one of the smaller side rooms all to themselves.

Dorothy and Bess acted as official hostesses, and there was a great cluster of red and white carnations in a cut glass bowl for a centerpiece, as red and white were the Orienta colors. Besides the Vaughan girls, there were seven others, all daughters of club members, and a delightful lot of girls, the rest decided.

“Only five of us are going to race, though,” said Connie Evans. “This is my first year at the seashore. We always go up to the Adirondacks. Father has a lodge up there, and it seems so strange not to be closed in by the mountains. I never sailed a yacht until this season, and mine is just a ‘cat’ with one sail.”

“Most of us have catboats,” replied Polly, reassuringly. “Mine is a ‘cat,’ too, and it is our first season with boats, so you need not be afraid of racing against experts. I think it will be lots of fun. Can you all swim?”

“No, we can’t, not one,” Bess declared. “We’ve been sand bathers this summer, mamma says, and haven’t been in at all above our shoulders. But I don’t think anything will happen, do you, Polly?”

“Polly believes that prevention is earth’s first law,” laughed Kate, as she saw Polly shake her head doubtfully. “You had best put a lot of buoys and life preservers in your boats.”

“What time would they have to put them on,” demanded Sue, “if they just dropped into the water? I think it would be a good idea if we wore belts like acrobats when they are training, with a ring in the back, and a rope fastened to it. Then if we fell over all we would have to do would be to hold on to the rope and be hauled in.”

“They say one of the men from the Station is to be on guard at the pier all day, and they will watch from the Point too.”

“That’s all right,” Crullers broke in, wistfully, “but if you fall overboard, you’ll swallow salt water enough to drown ten cats, before they have time to get to you; I know from experience.”

“Let’s not even think it may happen,” said Polly, happily. “Dorothy, couldn’t we have the Cup on the table just as a reminder?”

Dorothy thought perhaps they might, and after a consultation with the steward the Junior Cup was borne in state into the room, and set in the place of honor at the head of the table between Dorothy and Polly, the two commodores.

“Day after to-morrow,” said Sue, thoughtfully regarding it, “I shall go home with that under my arm.”

“Listen to her, girls,” Kate cried. “And remember what I prophesy. The Patsy D. will finish fifth, while the Witch Cat glides over the line first.”

Polly said nothing. From her seat beside Dorothy, she looked at the beautiful silver cup and thought of the race. She had said she was a good sportsman, as the Admiral wished her to be, and she was sure she could see the Cup go to the best yacht without any feeling of envy, but she almost wished there might have been nine consolation prizes, for something seemed to tell her that the Pirate would be the winner. There was something different about Tom’s big knockabout, and the daring way that Nancy sailed her, that left the other boats out in the cold. Nancy knew the bay well. She was used to every ripple on it, every turn of the tide, every breath of wind, every mood and whim that passed over it like cloud shadows. And she knew, too, the trim, slender boat as she might some live, tamed animal that loved her. The Cup would mean a great deal more to her than to the other girls. Most of them came from well-to-do families, and they themselves were happy, normal city-bred girls, who had had plenty of amusement and novelty in their lives, while Nancy had spent all of hers in the little gray cottage that listed to leeward on Fair Havens’ beach. She had never even been inside the Orienta until the girls took her with them, and now that she was there and had a chance of winning the Cup, she seemed like another girl. While the rest chatted and laughed, she sat quietly by, but Polly caught her glance now and then, and the quick, wistful smile, and she knew what she was thinking about. Once, when Dorothy rose to make a little speech, Polly closed her eyes for a second, in a half-expressed prayer that if it were right for Nancy to win the race, she herself might be willing and glad to have her.

“But you’re not,” she told herself, after the luncheon, when they all went down to the beach to walk and pass the time. Her chin was raised, her brown eyes troubled, but she smiled in the old bright way, and laughed with the rest, even while she thought: “You’re not glad, Polly Page, that Nancy has even a little bit of a chance against the Tidy Jane, and you want the Cup with all your heart, and you know perfectly well that if Nancy were not in the race, you could win it.”

“Polly, you look just like the Winged Victory with the wind blowing back your hair and dress that way,” called Ruth.

“I wouldn’t allow such a comparison,” Kate declared. “Polly, it doesn’t have any head, you know.”

But Polly smiled and waved her hand at them, and said nothing. Nancy was walking beside her, and she wondered whether a true sportsman ever allows sentimental reasons to outweigh his sense of fairness, whether it was wrong for her to hope with all her heart that she might win the race when Nancy had set all her hopes on it.

“Father says that if I should win the Cup,” Nancy whispered, happily, as she slipped her arm through Polly’s, “he’ll build me a knockabout for next year just like Tom’s. And just think, if you girls hadn’t let me come into your club, I couldn’t have raced at all. Aren’t things queer, Polly?”

“Curious and curiouser,” smiled back Polly, remembering the expression of one of her favorite heroines. The Doctor and Mrs. Bardwell were walking towards them, with several of the club members, and they all strolled down to the pier to watch for the incoming yachts. At just four-thirty-two by the Doctor’s watch, the first boat hove in sight around the Point. She was too far away for them to distinguish her identity, but hardly had she come about and started on the new stretch than a larger yacht appeared, following hard in her wake.

“That’s the Thistle,” cried Dorothy. “I know the cut of her sails. Oh, dear, I wonder if the other is papa’s?”

“The Thistle’s crowding on more sail, and gaining,” Polly exclaimed, watching them through glasses. “She will win!”

“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Bardwell rejoined cheerily. “A race is never won till it’s done, you know, so hope to the finish.”

There were three in sight now, one following the other as closely and evenly as flying geese, but still the Thistle strove to the fore. That first mile up the bay, the girls hardly spoke, as they leaned over the iron chain that was stretched along the pier for safety. Their eyes were bright, their lips half-parted as they tried to watch every swerve, every manoeuvre on the part of the racers. All at once Bess declared she knew the first vessel was the Adventure because there was a lady on deck, and she had waved to her.

“Bess Vaughan,” laughed Polly, “you make me think of the soldier in the fairy tale who was a sharpshooter and could aim at a fly on the limb of a tree five miles off. That boat is a mile and a half from us now.”

“Just you wait and see,” Bess retorted seriously. “Maybe it wasn’t her handkerchief, but I know it’s the Adventure.”

“Oh, girls,” exclaimed Isabel, excitedly. “See the big one dip sideways.”

“Sideways, child,” Aunt Cynthy repeated, merrily. “To leeward, dear heart, to leeward.”

Even at that distance it appeared as if the larger yacht had the best chance.

“I’m sure they could crowd on more sail,” Dorothy said, helplessly. “Why don’t they do it? Tom says there’s always room for another reef some place on a sloop.”

“That’s just what’s happening this minute,” Kate said. “The Thistle has every inch on she can carry, and there’s still over a mile to go.”

“Polly, if that old New York boat should win, I shall lie down on the sand, and simply, simply—” Isabel hesitated for lack of an apt expression, but Ted filled it in for her calmly.

“Suspire. And be sure and do it very quietly, Isabel, so as not to disturb the race.”

Isabel laughed good-humoredly with the rest. The six weeks’ vacation at Lost Island had helped her in many ways. She would always be more precise than the other girls, more attentive to the formalities of life, as Miss Calvert expressed it, but the hearty, daily companionship and example set by the rest had filed down many sharp little points in her character. At Calvert Hall both Ted and Sue had loved to tease her, but someway she did not mind it any more. She could laugh back at them like Kate or Polly now, and it was rarely that one of “Isabel’s grumbles” was heard. “Lady Vanitas” she would always be, for she dearly loved pretty clothes and dainty things. Sue had expressed her ideas on dress aptly one day when she had remarked that Isabel couldn’t even wear a sweater at basket ball unless it had a fancy border to it and a stickpin in front. Even to-day the brim of her white duck yachting cap was pinned jauntily back with a class pin, while the other girls had turned theirs down to keep the sun out of their eyes. It seemed as if Isabel’s collar never wilted under the hottest sun, her belt never sagged out of place, and her shoe strings never came untied. Polly’s eyes always lingered over this member of her crew approvingly, for she, too, loved neatness and good taste.

All of the club verandas were thronged with onlookers during that final half hour. Both boats were hesitating under a vagrant puff of adverse wind, when suddenly the Adventure seemed to get under way and slipped steadily down the course, ahead of her New York rival. Something white fluttered from her deck, and all of the girls waved their handkerchiefs wildly in response. Somewhere back in the crowd on shore a boy’s voice shouted:

“Come along, Adventure, come along there!”

The girls laughed, for they knew it must be Tom, losing his head at the critical moment. The little sloop held gallantly to the point she had gained, and glided finally over the imaginary line that ended the course, while cheer on cheer rang out from the club house and the shore away up to the hotel. The cup would remain with the Orienta Club for another season.

After the shouts had at last died away, and the fussy little committee launch had puffed back and forth among the returning yachts, the girls took their leave, and started homeward, with the Admiral and the Vaughan girls in tow. The Doctor had undertaken to return Mrs. Bardwell safely to the house of the roses, and she declared as she kissed each girl that it had been the first day she had spent in society in twenty years.

“Bless her,” Polly said tenderly, as she watched the Doctor tuck the tan lap robe about her. “She doesn’t know what a nice ‘society’ she is all by herself.”

“Admiral Page,” interposed Ted, gravely, “isn’t Polly sentimental?”

“All sailors should be,” rejoined the Admiral, his eyes twinkling. “Not exactly sentimental, but full of sentiment, eh, Polly, mate?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Polly, but she was thinking of something else, thinking of Nancy and the Junior Cup.

Aunty Welcome lived up to her name in the dinner that she had prepared for her “Marse Bob.” Polly had declared the dining-room in the cottage was too small for such a festive occasion, so dinner was served in state out on the porch. It was an evening they all remembered out of a long, happy summer-time. Two small tables set together made quite a commodious banquet board. Aunt Cynthy’s bouquets, freshened up after a good drink of water, made a pretty centerpiece, with the blue and gold yacht club pennant waving above it. The Admiral insisted on Polly taking the head of the table with Kate, as club chaperon, at the foot.

“I am merely a guest,” he said, “and will sit at the Commodore’s right hand, if she will permit.”

Long after the sun went down, the little dinner party went on, until the moon rose, and the bay lay like a sea of quicksilver and jet below them. Then they heard the sound of wheels along the shore road, and Tom’s long cheery hail, and the Admiral rose to take his leave.

“To-morrow,” he told them, “you had better stay right here and rest. The day’s event is for twenty-footers and over, and they have a long course to cover. I’ll run over in the afternoon and see how you are. Tom or the Captain will go over the yachts with me, for I want to be sure everything is shipshape.”

Dorothy and Bess had returned with the girls, and as it was their first night at Lost Island, there were whisperings and smothered laughter long after the official “taps” had been sounded.

“What’s ‘taps’?” echoed Ted when Bess asked what they meant. “Just listen.”

Out in the kitchen Aunty Welcome’s steady footfalls could be heard as she moved around, locking the door, winding the clock, humming a sweet old camp-meeting tune under her breath, and finally stepping to the foot of the stairs, to blow out the bracket lamp that hung there.

“You all keep still, now, and go to sleep, and say your prayers, like good chilluns, you hyar me?” she asked forcibly. There was a dead silence, supposed to come only from heavy sleepers. As soon as she had gone to her own room, Ted’s head rose from the couch, and she whispered:

“That’s ‘taps’.”