“There’s a shoal place here off the headland,” he remarked at last; “you’ll have to make two or three tacks to get around it. That pesky _Josephine_ can sail right over and will get more of a start than ever. If the tide were half an hour higher I would risk following. Now we’ve come so far we’ve got to get her.”
“But—but—what do I do?” inquired Billy, quite bewildered at the task set him. A boy who has never sailed a boat before finds suddenly a whole world of things that he would like to know.
“Why, nothing but just come up into the wind, loose the sheet, lay your new course over toward the lighthouse there. Now’s the minute—Ready about!”
Somehow, Billy never quite knew how, the thing was done. The bow swung round, the big sail fluttered and trembled a moment, then came over with a rush, and the catboat was off on her new tack. To Billy it seemed as though the wind had totally changed in direction, as though the small vessel were tipping dangerously, and as though anything might happen at any moment, but he kept manfully silent about it all. If this was the way one learned to sail a boat, he supposed that he could master it as well as another.
Captain Saulsby seemed to be totally unaware of his torment of mind. He still sat, gazing moodily out to sea and saying not a word.
“You’d better come about now,” he remarked suddenly when they had sailed some distance toward the lighthouse. After an instant of indecision and fumbling awkwardness, come about Billy did, with more ease this time, but no great knowledge of just what was happening. Once more they stood off on the new course, the tubby little craft rising and dipping bravely, Billy clinging to the tiller and beginning to feel suddenly that the boat was a live thing under his hand, ready to do his slightest bidding.
“Once more,” ordered Captain Saulsby when it was time to tack, and this time Billy accomplished it without a hitch.
“Captain Saulsby,” he cried in beaming delight, “I can sail her, I know how to sail her!” A slow broad grin illuminated Captain Saulsby’s mahogany-colored countenance.
“I thought you could,” he said slowly, “but it was a little ticklish at first, wasn’t it? And, good Heavens, the wake you leave!”