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 manœuvre 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’.”