Читать книгу Keeping His Course - Ralph Henry Barbour - Страница 4

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They came up separately, Toby first. Fortunately for the boy of the launch, a good eight feet separated him from Toby at the moment of his emergence, for Toby was by no means satisfied and proved it by an earnest endeavor to reach his adversary before the latter could splash and flounder his way around the bow of the launch and throw himself, breathless and half-drowned, across the edge of the float. From that position he squirmed not an instant too soon and half-leaped and half-fell across the gunwale of the launch and seized the boat-hook.

“Now, you wild idiot,” he gasped, “you keep away from me!”

Toby viewed the situation, pulled himself to the float and grinned. “All right,” he said. “You got the best of it now, but it ain’t red, and I’ll make you say so sooner or later. Now you pay what you owe me.”

An expression of blank dismay came to the other’s face, and he gazed anxiously about deck and water. “I dropped it! You made me do it, too! Now you find it!”

Toby shrugged. “I guess it’s at the bottom now. Let me look.”

“You stay where you are,” commanded the other, threatening again with his weapon.

“I won’t do anything—honest,” assured Toby. “Not now, that is. Put that thing down and let me see if I can see your money.”

In a moment the two were leaning over the side of the launch and peering into the water. But the surface was ruffled and it was impossible to see much below it. “When did you let go of it?” inquired Toby.

“How do I know? When you grabbed me, I suppose.”

“Haven’t you got any more money with you?”

“No, I haven’t, and if I had I wouldn’t give it to you,” was the ungracious reply. Toby considered. Finally:

“Well, I’ll take half the blame,” he decided, “but that’s all. You pay me ninety-nine cents and we’ll call it square.”

“That’s twenty-two cents a gallon, though.”

Toby nodded. “Sure. That’s the price.”

After a moment’s consideration the other consented. “But you’ll have to trust me for it,” he said. “That two dollars was all I had.”

“All right. What’s your name?”

“Deering, Arnold Deering. I live on the Head.”

“Spanish Head? Whose house have you got?”

“We live in our own house. It’s called ‘Cedarcroft,’ and it’s the big one right at the end——”

“Oh, the new one that was built last winter? All right. Arnold Deering, eh? I’ll remember. You’re the fellow who owes me ninety-nine cents—and an apology.”

“You’ll get the ninety-nine cents, all right; I’ll bring it over tomorrow. But you’ll have to whistle for any apology from me!”

“I can whistle,” answered Toby undisturbedly.

“You’ll have to!” Arnold was having difficulty with the knot he had tied. Toby looked on quizzically.

“Those square knots——” he began.

“Oh, shut up!” Arnold finally cast loose and climbed aboard. “You get off now.”

“I was thinking maybe you’d drop me at the town landing,” replied Toby calmly. “I’ve got a box of groceries over there.”

“Well, all right, but you’ll have to jump. I don’t intend to stop for you.”

“Sure. Reverse her when you start and back out. Put your wheel hard over and——”

“Say,” inquired Arnold belligerently, “who’s running this thing?”

“You are. How long have you had her?”

“About a week.”

“She’s a nice boat. If I was you I’d learn to run her. Don’t do a boat any good to ram her into things.”

“Is that so? I’ll bet I can run a launch as well as you can, you——”

“Careful!” warned Toby.

“You fresh kid!”

“All right. Look out for the coal wharf. Mr. Rollinson would be awfully mad if you carried away the end of it! Just slow her up and I’ll jump for it.”

“I hope you fall in,” said the other vindictively. Toby laughed.

“I wouldn’t be much wetter if I did! All right now. Thanks!” He made a flying leap over the four feet of water between launch and float and landed safely. Simultaneously Arnold twirled the wheel and the Frolic pointed her nose down the harbor and chugged indignantly away. Not, however, until Toby had sent a gentle reminder floating after her.

“Frolic, ahoy!” he shouted.

Arnold turned an inquiring head.

“Don’t forget that ninety-nine cents! And remember I’m still whistling!”

There was no reply, and Toby, seating himself on the box, chuckled wickedly and resumed his onerous task.

Toby’s father wasn’t nearly as amused as Toby had expected him to be when he was told the incident of the last two-dollar bill at dinner that day. Mr. Tucker was a tall, stooped man of forty-odd years, with faded blue eyes in a weather-tanned face. The Tuckers had been boat builders for three generations, and Mr. Aaron Tucker’s skin seemed to have borrowed the hue from the mahogany that for so many years past had been sawed and shaped and planed and sandpapered in the big shed across the harbor road. In the old days Tucker’s Boat Yard had turned out good-sized fishing and pleasure craft, but business had fallen away in the last dozen years, and now small launches and sloops and rowboats constituted the output. And, at that, business was far from brisk. Perhaps Mr. Tucker had the fact in mind when he inquired dryly who was to pay for that other four and a half gallons of gasoline.

“I guess I’ll have to,” said Toby, ruefully.

“I calculate you will,” agreed his father.

“At the wholesale price, though,” added the boy hastily; and Mr. Tucker’s eyes twinkled as he nodded.

But if the story won small appreciation from his father, there was one, at least, at the dinner table who enjoyed it, and that was Toby’s sister, Phebe. Phebe Tucker was thirteen, a slim, pretty girl with hair that Toby called “yaller” and Phebe’s mother termed golden. She had very bright, brown eyes under long lashes and a skin that, even though nearly as brown as Toby’s, was clear and smooth. There were no other children and so Toby and his sister had always been very close companions, a fact which probably accounted for a somewhat boyish quality in Phebe. She could sail a boat nearly as well as Toby, catch quite as many fish, was no mean hand at the oars, and could perform almost as many “stunts” in the water as he could. She asked no favors and was always ready for adventure—a jolly, companionable girl with a wealth of spirits, and good nature and good health.

Neither of the children resembled their mother in looks, for Mrs. Tucker was small, with dark hair and eyes, and comfortably stout. Her children called her “roly-poly,” a descriptive term which Mrs. Tucker pretended to resent. For the rest, she was a quiet, kind-hearted little woman, who worshiped her big husband and her children, and whose main ambition was to see that they were happy.

Saturday afternoon was always a holiday for Toby and Phebe, and after dinner was over they went out to the front steps and pondered what to do. The cottage was a neat, white-clapboarded little house, perched on a slope above the harbor road. From the gate a flight of six wooden steps led to a tiny bricked walk which ran the length of the cottage.

A wistaria vine, venerable with age, was in full bloom at one side of the doorway, while between house and walk narrow beds held a wealth of old-fashioned flowers. From the steps one looked across the cobbled, winding harbor road, tree-shaded in summer, to the boat yard with its weather-beaten shed and its old stone wharf, and beyond that to the little harbor and to the nestling village houses on the other side.

“We might go out in the launch,” suggested Toby, “only I’d have to fix the wiring first.”

“Would it take long?” asked his sister.

“I guess not. I couldn’t find the trouble yesterday, though. We might take a run around to Shinnecock if I can get her started.”

“Let’s,” said Phebe. “It’s too beautiful a day to stay ashore. You go ahead and see if you can’t fix it and I’ll be right along.”

So Toby crossed the road, passed around the further side of the big shed, from which came the tap-tap of hammers and the buzz of the bandsaw, climbed down a slippery ladder and dropped into the launch.

Toby had made most of that boat himself. It wasn’t as grand as the Frolic and it boasted little bright work and no gilt. But, in spite of its name, it was at once safe, roomy and fast. Its name—you had to look on the stern to find it—was Turnover. In lowering the engine into it the summer before Toby’s assistant had lost control of the rope, with the result that the engine, at that instant poised over the gunwale, had descended very hurriedly. The boat, probably resenting the indignity, had promptly turned its keel to the sky and dumped the engine to the bottom of the slip in six feet of water. The boat hadn’t actually turned over, for having got rid of the engine and shipped a good deal of water it had righted itself very nicely, but Toby had dubbed it Turnover there and then.

The Turnover was sixteen feet long, with a four-and-a-half-foot beam, had a two-cylinder engine—purchased second-hand but really as good as new—capable of sending the launch through the water at a good twelve-mile gait, and was painted a rather depressing shade of gray. Toby favored that color not so much for its attractiveness as because it didn’t show dirt, and it must be owned that the Turnover was seldom immaculate, inside or out. But she suited Toby down to the ground—or perhaps I should say down to the water—and I doubt if any one else could have made her go as he did. The Turnover had her own eccentricities and it was necessary to humor her.

Toby began operations by pushing his duck hat to the back of his head and reflectively scratching the front of it, a trick caught from his father. Then, having decided on a plan of action, he set to work. Before he had discovered the trouble and remedied it, with the aid of an odd bit of insulated copper wire pulled from a locker, Phebe was swinging her feet from the edge of the wharf and watching. Experience had taught her the advisability of keeping out of the way until the work was done. At last, wiping a perspiring face in a bunch of greasy waste, Toby threw the switch on and turned the fly-wheel over.

A heartening chug-chug rewarded him, and, tossing the tools back in the locker, he unscrewed the cap of the gasoline tank, plunged a stick into it, examined the result, did some mental calculation, and at last declared himself ready to start. Phebe lowered herself nimbly down the ladder and seated herself at the wheel while Toby cast off the lines from the bow and stern. The Turnover backed out of the little slip rather noisily, swung her pert nose toward the harbor mouth, and presently was sliding past the moored craft at a fine clip. Once around the point the breeze met them and the Turnover began to nod to the quartering waves. Toby slathered oil here and there, gave her more gas, and seated himself across from his sister.

“She’s going fine,” he said. “I guess we could make Robins Island if we wanted to.”

“That’s too far, Toby. I’d rather go to Shinnecock.”

“All right. It’s going to be dandy after we get around the Head. There’s a peach of a swell, isn’t there?”

The launch dipped her way past Nobbs Island, with its squatty lighthouse, and Phebe turned the launch toward the Head.

“There’s the place that fellow lives,” said Toby, nodding at a fine new stone-and-shingle house on the point. “The fellow I had the scrap with, I mean.”

“It’s a lovely house,” said Phebe. “I suppose they have lots of money, don’t you?”

“Slathers, I guess. He’s a pill. Can’t run that launch any more than Mr. Murphy can.” (Mr. Murphy was Phebe’s parrot, and, while he had been through some nautical experiences, he was naturally no navigator!) “He didn’t do a thing to her paint when he bumped into the float.” Toby chuckled. “And wasn’t he peeved with me!”

“I guess you were horribly superior and nasty,” said Phebe. “You can be, you know.”

“Oh, well, I hate fellows to put on a lot of airs just because their folks have money,” grumbled Toby. “The way he talked to me, you’d have thought I was a hunk of dirt.”

“Was he nice looking?” asked Phebe.

“Oh, I suppose you’d call him that. Sort of a pretty boy, with his hair all slicked back like it was varnished. It didn’t look so fine when he came out of the water, though!”

“That was a horrid thing to do, Toby.” But she smiled as she said it.

“I didn’t do it, sis. He stumbled—sort of—and went over backwards, and I went with him. You ought to have seen the way he scrambled out of there when he saw me coming after him! Say, we might run in to their landing and collect that ninety-nine cents, eh?”

“Indeed, we aren’t going to do anything of the kind!” replied Phebe severely, and Toby laughed.

“I was just fooling. He’ll pay it, all right. And he’ll apologize for calling me red-headed, too.”

“I don’t see why you mind that so much,” said Phebe. “I think red hair is lovely. I wish mine was red, like Nellie Rollinson’s.”

“I don’t. I think it’s awful.”

“Why, Toby, you said once you thought Nellie’s hair was very pretty!”

“Maybe it is, on her. It wouldn’t be on you, though. And I don’t want any of it, thanks. Take her in a little closer to shore. It’s flood tide.”

The Turnover was remarkably well behaved today and they ran into the canal long before two o’clock, and, at Phebe’s suggestion, disembarked and walked over to the hills and, finally, to the south shore. The summer season was well begun and there was plenty to see and to interest them. They had ice cream sodas at a little shop and wandered back to the launch about three. Instead of making straight home, Toby, who claimed the wheel now, headed the Turnover toward the middle of the bay, and, with a nice breeze blowing Phebe’s hair about her face and enough of a chop to set the launch advancing merrily in the sunlight, they spent the next hour in running leisurely across to the north shore and back. It was when the Turnover was pointed homeward again, about four, that Phebe, curled up in the bow, called Toby’s attention to a small launch a mile or so distant and some two miles off Spanish Head.

“They are either fishing or have broken down. I’ve been watching them for some time.”

“There aren’t any fish there,” replied Toby, viewing the distant launch. “Guess their engine’s gone back on them. They’ve got their anchor over. We’ll soon find out.”

“They’re waving at us, I think,” said Phebe a minute later. “Look, Toby.”

“That’s right.” Toby waved his hat in reply and sent the Turnover along faster. “I wonder what launch that is,” he added as the distance lessened. “She looks a bit like——” his voice dwindled. Then he laughed, and: “That’s just who she is!” he cried gayly. “That’s the Frolic, sis! And, unless I’m much mistaken, that’s Pretty Boy waving!”