THE _Turnover_
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!”