Men, Women, and Boats | Page 7

them. The crest of each of these waves
was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a
broad tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably
splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with
lights of emerald and white and amber.
"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook; "If not, where
would we be? Wouldn't have a show."
"That's right," said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor,
contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think We've got much of a show
now, boys?" said he.
Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and
hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be
childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the
situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On
the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any
open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.
"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "We'll get ashore all
right."
But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler
quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"
The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."
Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the

sea, near patches of brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with a
movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in
groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of
the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a
thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the
men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and
sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them,
telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on
the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to the boat and did
not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in chicken- fashion.
His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's head. "Ugly
brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you were made with a
jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent swore darkly at the
creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with the end of
the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because anything
resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this freighted boat,
and so with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved the
gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain
breathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier
because the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehow
grewsome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also they
rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the
oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the
oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very
ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining
one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth,
it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change seats in
the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the thwart and
moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the man in the rowing
seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done with most
extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other, the whole party
kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried: "Look
out now! Steady there!"

The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were like
islands, bits of earth. They were traveling, apparently, neither one way
nor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed the
men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on a
great swell, said that he had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet.
Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent was
at the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the
lighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were
important, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turn
his head. But at