DOWN THE RIVER.
“Now we are all right,” said Lon, as he stepped into the boat.
“I don’t think any one has seen us,” added Matt, following his
companion.
“No one could have seen us.”
“Shall we start now?”
“Yes: we may as well be moving. It must be twelve o’clock by this
time,” added Lon, as he looked at his watch; but it was so dark he
could not see a figure on the dial.
“Do you expect to get to New York in this boat, Lon?” asked Matt, as he
seated himself in the stand-room.
“Of course I do: what’s to prevent? It don’t leak, and there is water
all the way to New York.”
“But you don’t know how to manage a boat any more than I do,” said
Matt, to whom this seemed to be a difficulty.
“It is easy enough to manage her; and, if I don’t know how, I can soon
learn,” replied the master spirit of the enterprise. “I have seen how
the thing is done, and I’m pretty sure that I can do it.”
“But your father would never let you have a boat, or even sail in this
one.”
“Though he has been to sea for thirty years of his life, he is afraid
of a sail-boat. He says he can handle a ship, but not one of these
little things.”
“If we are going, why don’t we go?” asked Matt.
“Because you don’t hoist the sail.”
“I don’t know any thing about the sail, and I don’t believe I can hoist
it. If Wade Brooks was here, he could do it; and he knows how to sail
the boat, for he learned of his father. I heard some one say that he is
a good boatman.”
“But Wade Brooks isn’t here; and I am glad he is not,” replied Lon.
“He is a goody; and I’ll half kill him, if I ever see him again, for
telling old Phil Garlick that we licked him for not stealing peaches.”
Matt went to the sail, and began to fumble it over in the darkness;
but he could make nothing of it. On the whole, he was a rather stupid
fellow, and he was not likely to learn any thing in the dark. He could
not undo the sail; and he gave up the task in a moment in despair. Then
Lon tried his hand, and succeeded in removing the stops. After trying
all the ropes about the mast (for the boat was a sloop), he found the
halyards. By observing what part of the sail moved when he pulled at
these lines, he found which was the peak, and which was the throat
halyard. Giving one to Matt, he heaved on the other; and at last they
managed to get the sail up, though not in very good shape.
“Now you take an oar, Matt, and shove her out from the shore, while I
mind the helm,” said Lon, as he assumed the duties of skipper.
There was no wind in the creek; and Matt worked the boat out into the
river with the oar. As soon as she had passed a wooded point, the sail
took the breeze, and the boat heeled over so as to scare Matt half out
of his wits; for he had hardly ever been out in a sail-boat.
“Mind what you are about, Lon!” exclaimed Matt. “You will upset her,
and then where shall we be?”
“In the water,” coolly replied Lon.
“But I don’t want to be in the water.”
“Nor I either; and I don’t think there is any more danger of it than
there is of the sky falling. The boat is doing very well.”
The wind was north-west, and the course of the river was about south at
the place where the adventurers embarked; and it was not very difficult
to make the boat go after she felt the breeze. Lon had a tolerable
idea of the handling of the tiller; for he had tried his hand at it in
a stolen sail in this old boat. As long as it was plain sailing, he
was likely to do very well. He experimented with the sail and the helm
till he got the hang of them. When a bend of the river made the course
south-west, he soon learned to haul in the sheet. The wind was so light
that the boat did not make more than two miles an hour, and, as long
as the skipper kept the old craft in the middle of the river, there
was nothing to prevent her from going, and it was not very perilous
navigation.
“I can handle her first-rate now,” said Lon, when the boat had been
moving about half an hour. “Long before we get to the Sound, I shall
know all about this business.”
“It will be another thing when we get out of the river, and we have to
go out to sea,” croaked Matt.
“What odds does it make whether we are in the river, or on the sound?
Both of them are water; and the boat will go as long as she has any
wind.”
“Suppose the wind comes from the wrong way: what are you going to do
then?” inquired Matt.
“I know how to do it then. You keep her zigzagging towards the point
where you want to go.”
“I have heard my father tell about some kind of a bad place which the
steamboats have to go through when they go to New York: how will you
get through that?” And Matt thought he had given Lon a poser this time.
“That’s Hell Gate; and I don’t intend to go through that, for it’s near
New York; and we can go from there in some other way.”
Lon was entirely satisfied that he could take the boat as far as the
dangerous place. Matt was getting tired of sailing in the night,
when he could only see where the river was; and the air was cold and
disagreeable. He had on his thin clothes, and was not fitted out for a
sea-voyage in the night. Besides, he was sleepy; for he had not closed
his eyes that night. He gaped till he was in danger of throwing his jaw
out of joint.
“What ails you, Matt?” asked Lon.
“I have got about enough of this thing,” replied Matt, with another
fearful gape. “I am tired and sleepy, and I am almost froze.”
“You can go to sleep if you wish to do so,” replied Lon, who was
dressed in thick clothes, and was quite comfortable in spite of the
chill of the air.
“I can’t go to sleep while I am shivering with the cold,” replied Matt;
and his whole frame shook as he spoke.
“Get into the cuddy, then, if you are cold. There was some hay in it
the last time I was in the boat. You can bury yourself in it, and get
warm,” said Lon, afraid that the discomfort of his companion might
wreck the expedition.
“I don’t want to be in that cuddy when the boat is going,” whined Matt,
his teeth chattering all the time. “Suppose she should hit on a rock,
and sink: what would become of me?”
“You would be likely to get wet.”
“I should be likely to get drowned.”
“Why don’t you stir yourself? you can get warm if you will thrash your
arms, or exercise yourself in some way. Get into the cuddy: there is no
danger of rocks. If we should hit one, it wouldn’t do any harm. We are
not going fast enough to break any thing.”
Matt was so cold that he was tempted to try the cuddy. He went to the
door, and found that it was fastened. He tried to push it in, and to
pull it out; but it resisted all his efforts. The iron hook on the
inside held it as firm as though the door had been an immovable body.
“Break it in, if you can’t open it,” said Lon.
“I can’t break it in: I have tried.”
“Take one of the oars, and jam it through the board.”
“I don’t want to spoil the door,” replied Matt. “If it comes on to rain
we shall want it.”
“But, if you can’t get into the cuddy, what good will it do us if it
does rain?” demanded Lon impatiently; for he did not like Matt’s way of
dealing with difficulties. “Smash it in.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Try it and see,” persisted Lon.
“I tell you I can’t,” snarled Matt.
“You are nothing but a baby, Matt Swikes,” added Lon, his patience all
gone. “Here, hold this tiller, and I will open that door, or make a
hole through the bottom of the boat.”
“I don’t know how to steer her,” pleaded Matt.
“I don’t want you to steer: she will steer herself, if you will hold
this stick just as it is now.”
Matt took the tiller; and Lon seized the oar, with which he struck a
heavy blow, driving the handle through the door. A second and a third
time he applied this battering-ram to the impediment; and the cuddy
was open to the admission of the runaways.
“Now you can go in, and stow yourself away in the hay, Matt,” said Lon
triumphantly.
“You have smashed the door into splinters, so there is nothing to keep
the cold out,” growled Matt, as he gave up the tiller to Lon.
“You can get in out of the wind, and it will be warmer there than it is
here,” added the skipper. “There is plenty of hay there, and you can
make yourself comfortable.”
“I will try it,” said Matt, as he moved forward for this purpose.
We left Wade Brooks in this very cuddy; but, in spite of this
rude onslaught on his abode, he did not make himself known to the
incendiaries. Yet he was still in the cuddy, and understood the
situation perfectly. He had slept soundly up to the time when Lon
battered down the door. He woke in mortal terror. He saw the dim light
through the hole which had been made by the oar. He was afraid the oar
might hit him; and he retreated as far as he could into the bow of the
boat, and stowed himself away between the mast and the stem, or as much
of himself as the space would permit, taking his spare clothes with
him. Lon made so much noise that he did not hear Wade move from his
position.
Wade had plenty of hay in the bow; and, by the time Matt was ready to
take possession of the cuddy, he was comfortably settled in his new
quarters. As soon as he heard the voices of the persons in the boat,
he knew who they were; but he was not anxious to make himself known,
for he was afraid Lon would take to pounding him. There was room enough
in the cuddy for both of them, and without either knowing the other was
there, unless an accident betrayed his presence.
Wade Brooks could not help thinking what would happen in the morning
when his fellow-voyagers found that he was in the boat. Lon was a
bully: he was such at school and on the playground. He had treated Wade
like a tyrant. Wade began to think whether he could not do as a plucky
little fellow did at school the winter before,--stand his ground, and
in the end whip the bully. He was in the boat with him, and there was
no chance to escape. He would try it; and he went to sleep thinking how
to do it.