A BOAT WITHOUT SAILS, SCREW, OR OARS
It did not require a gong to arouse Andy in the morning, but it did
call for a gentle shaking from his mother’s hand.
“Gee!” he exclaimed as he tumbled out of bed, “I’m losin’ time. But I
reckon I’d better wait till breakfast is over.”
“Just what is all this hurry about?” asked Mrs. Leighton. “You must
remember, my son, this is not a hotel.”
“Yes, I know,” explained the boy, “but there is so much to do to-day.”
“Well, please don’t get excited,” said his mother with some severity,
“we’ll proceed with our own affairs when it suits our host and hostess.
And remember, Andy, you are not to accept a boat from Captain Anderson
as a gift.”
“I understand,” answered the boy, with an attempt to control his
enthusiasm. “But, say, mother, look at this.”
He caught up the map he had so eagerly examined the night before.
His hair tousled, and still in his bare feet, Andy spread it before
his perplexed mother. “Here, look,” he went on, “all these things are
islands, the Bahama Islands, the West India Islands――that’s where
everything comes from you read about――sponges and tropical fruits,
bananas and things, and,” he looked up, his eyes blazing, “we could go
there if we had a boat――they’re right over here――”
“Andrew,” said his mother slowly, as she motioned him toward his
undonned clothes, “you are here because your father couldn’t come and
because I couldn’t come alone. When we have looked into your dead
uncle’s affairs and arranged them as well as we can, we are going back
home. We are not going to the Bahamas.”
“Yes’m,” answered Andy meekly.
“From the minute we landed here, you’ve been excited. You seem to think
this is the beginning of some remarkable adventure. It isn’t. It is a
business trip.”
“Yes’m.”
“Now, you quiet yourself, get on your clothes, and when we’ve had our
breakfast and Captain Anderson is ready, we’ll go about our business
like two sane persons. Don’t let me hear anything more about engines,
boats, or the West Indies.”
“Yes’m.”
A little later, Andy, having completed his morning toilet, slowly
wandered from the house toward the pier where Captain Anderson was
making an early examination of his boats.
“Hello there!” sang out the captain. “I thought you’d be out by sun up.”
“I kind o’ overslept,” answered Andy sadly.
“Why, what’s the matter? Didn’t you rest well?”
“Too well,” was the boy’s slow rejoinder.
“Well, don’t worry about it. We’ve got lots of time to talk over
things. Did you lay out a course to the Bahamas before you turned in?”
Andy sighed and looked sorrowfully out over the river.
“Nothin’ doin’ in the Bahamas line,” he said at last.
“You seem to be in the dumps,” Captain Anderson remarked.
“I reckon you’d be, too, if you had the trimmin’ I just got.”
“Trimmin’?”
“My mother thinks I’ve been botherin’ you too much. Have I?”
“Botherin’ me? How?”
“Oh, buttin’ in about engines, and beggin’ you to let me have that
aero-catamaran, and talkin’ boats, and borrowin’ your map, and
pesterin’ you about the Bahamas.”
“She don’t really believe that, does she? Why, Andy, I put all those
things in your head.”
“She says we’re down here on business. When we attend to that, we’re
goin’ back home. I’m sorry we had to bother you at all. I guess you can
keep the aero-catamaran.”
The good-natured captain was shaking with laughter.
“Anyway,” he said, at last, with a chuckle, “she won’t care if you just
_look_ at the engine, and you’d better look at the rowboat I’m goin’ to
give you――”
“Got orders on that, too. You’ve done too much for us already. I can’t
take it.”
“Can’t, eh?” said the captain quizzically. “Why not buy it?”
The boy had his eyes fixed longingly on a staunch, flat-bottomed skiff,
painted red, and carrying the name _Red Bird_ in white.
“I don’t know that we can afford it,” he said in a hesitating voice.
“Well, of course, if I sell it, I must have my price,” went on the
amused captain. “There’s a little leg-o’-mutton sail that goes with
her.”
“What’s a boat like that worth?” Andy asked at last.
“Well, I’ll have to figure,” answered his elder, puckering his mouth.
“The stuff in her was secondhand, and I reckon it cost me $1.50. Then
there was the labor, say two days. We’ll call it a dollar and a half a
day――that’s $4.50 altogether. And about a quarter for paint――”
“And the mast and sail?” suggested Andy.
“Nothin’,” answered Captain Anderson. “The stick floated in, and the
sail ain’t anything but a scrap.”
“Could you afford to sell her for $4.75?”
“I could,” answered the captain, “but it wouldn’t be fair. A boat like
that won’t last over five years, and this one is over two years old.
She’s two-fifths gone. Take her for three-fifths of $4.75.”
When the boy had figured that it was $2.85, his frown suddenly changed
to a smile.
“Captain,” he exclaimed, “I almost bit. You’re kiddin’ me. I’d rather
take it as a gift than offer you $2.85 for a boat like that. No,” and
his troubled look returned. “Nothin’ doin’ in the boat line, either.”
Captain Anderson made no answer to the boy’s statement other than
to smile again and to throw open the door of the boathouse. Within,
and occupying a space about twenty by thirty feet, was a combined
reading and man’s living room, carpenter and machine shop, and general
repository of all sorts of delightful odds and ends. To Andy the big
room was redolent with a variety of fascinating odors――from fresh oak
and pine shavings, oakum, pitch, and tar――new reminders of boats and
the sea.
In one corner stood a desk, a bookcase jammed with volumes of many
sizes, a cot, and a stove.
“My rainy day corner,” suggested the boy’s guide.
On the opposite side stood two workbenches and a foot-power lathe,
while, on the benches and above them on the wall, were tools of all
kinds.
From the rafters, suspended on big wooden hooks, hung spars, oars, and
strips of many kinds of wood. In the midst of these, resting on two
special racks, were what appeared to be two racing shells, each about
twenty feet long.
“They’re part of it,” volunteered Captain Anderson, as he saw Andy
gazing in admiration at the fragile boats. “They’re the part of the
aero-catamaran we made.”
“And the engine?” asked Andy.
“Over here,” replied the captain. “A little rusty, but protected as
well as I know how. She hasn’t turned a wheel in over two years.”
As he withdrew a tarpaulin cover the boy could not restrain himself. He
burst out:
“Did my uncle make that?”
“You didn’t suspect I did it, did you?” laughed Captain Anderson.
The boy was already on his knees. He didn’t understand boats, but gas
engines he did understand. For several minutes the excited boy hung
over the motor; his fingers moved over its perfect parts. Then he
sprang to his feet.
“Do you know what that is, Captain Anderson?” he exclaimed with all his
former fervor.
“Your uncle called it a gas engine. But it always struck me as pretty
light weight for an engine.”
“Did it run all right?” asked the boy.
“Run?” repeated the captain. “She ran like a house afire.”
“If that motor,” said Andy slowly, “is as good as it looks, it is a
better piece of machinery than anything of the kind ever made in
America. Why, we send to France for engines like that, and pay $2,000
for ’em. Are you sure my uncle made it?”
“You’ll see his shop this morning,” was the captain’s only answer.
“He was two years ahead of the rest of the world,” said Andy
decisively. “Why, it’s almost as light as a Fiat. Eight cylinders and
water cooled,” he went on, as if talking to himself. “Did he ever say
what horse power it developed?”
The captain shook his head.
“Listen to those cylinders!” exclaimed the boy, as he tapped them with
a pencil. “Thin as a drumhead. Auto-lubricating alloy for bearings,
too,” he added with increasing excitement. “And hollow steel tubing
instead of solid rods――every atom pared away that can be spared.
Captain Anderson,” concluded the young expert, springing to his feet
again, “I’ll tell you what this engine is――it’s the most perfect
aeroplane motor ever made!”
“Aeroplane?” repeated Captain Anderson. “Flyin’ machine engine?
’Twasn’t made for that. It was made to run a boat.”
“I don’t care what it was made for; it’s an aeroplane motor and a
beauty――”
“Will you gentlemen be good enough to come to breakfast?”
It was Mrs. Anderson, standing in the boathouse door.
Too excited to respond immediately, Andy continued:
“Why did he make such a light engine, if it was for use on a boat?”
“Well, here’s the idea,” explained the captain, nodding to his wife.
“Your uncle lived here nearly ten years. Finally he had to take to
boating. But he hadn’t any more use for a sailboat than I have for a
power-boat. So he rigged up a gasoline engine and a screw on an old
hull, and began runnin’ aground on every bar in the river. That’s when
I had the laugh on him, because I knew the channels. At last he got
mad. And one day, he figured out the aero-catamaran. Here’s a plan of
it,” added the captain, pointing to a scale drawing on the wall.
“It has air propellers!” was Andy’s immediate exclamation.
“Sure,” said the captain. “And _they_ were all right; they made her
hump, too.”
The design showed the two twenty-foot narrow boats (or racing shells)
braced together after the manner of East India catamarans. On the
crosspieces, which afforded a deck space seven feet wide, a heavier
frame was shown. On this, rising something less than a foot above the
boat gunwales, rested the engine, from which a shaft extended sternward.
Beginning at the engine, and also extending aft, was another open frame
six feet long and seven by seven feet in width and height. Shafted on
each top rear corner of this frame was a six-foot propeller connected
with the engine shaft by chain drives. In front of the engine the boat
braces were decked and here, similar to an automobile steering wheel,
was a wheel from which wires extended to the rudder at the stern of
each shell.
“Why’d you take her apart?” asked Andy at last, his voice full of
unmeant rebuke.
“We didn’t,” explained Captain Anderson. “We made her just as you see
her in the picture, and she did what her designer planned,――paid no
attention to bars and reefs. She even gave the _Valkaria_ a black eye,
making sixteen miles on smooth water. But――”
“But what?” interrupted Andy.
“Everything was all right but the braces, the catamaran part. The first
gale that hit her twisted her to pieces.”