middle of upper Narragansett
Bay, trying to make a diagonal across it to the southwest, while the long
rollers came in steadily from the south, broken by a nasty chop of peaked,
whitecapped waves. We rowed carefully, our heads over our right shoulders,
watching each wave as it came on, with broken comments:--

"That's a good one coming--bring her up now--there--all right, now let her
off again--hold her so--there's another coming--see?--that big one, the fifth,
the fourth, away--row, now--we beat it--there it goes off astern--see it
break! Here's another--look out for your oar--we can't afford to miss a
stroke--oh, me! Did that wet you too? My right shoulder is soaked--my left
isn't--now it is!"

But half an hour of this sort of thing brought about two
results--confidence in the little boat, which rode well in spite of her
load, and confidence in each other's rowing. We found that the four oars
worked together, our early training told, and we instinctively did the
same things in each of the varied emergencies created by wind and wave.
There was no need for orders, and our talk died down to an exclamation now
and then at some especially big wave, or a laugh as one of us got a
drenching from the white top of a foaming crest.

It was not an easy day, that first one.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} It seems, sometimes, as if there
were little imps of malignity that hovered over one at the beginning of an
undertaking--little brownies, using all their charms to try to turn one
back, discouraged. If there be such, they had a good time with us that
long afternoon. First they had said that we shouldn't load our boat. Then
they sent us rough water. Then they set the boat a-leak.

For leak it did. The soaking over night had done no good. It had, indeed,
been "thoroughly overhauled" and pronounced seaworthy, but there was the
water, too much to be accounted for as spray, swashing over the bottom
boards, growing undeniably and most uncomfortably deeper. The imps made no
offer to bale for us, so we had to do it ourselves, losing the much-needed
power at the oars, while one of us set to work at the dip-and-toss,
dip-and-toss motion so familiar to any one who has kept company with a
small boat.

"I wish my mother could see me now--" hummed Jonathan.

"I wouldn't wish that."

"Why not?"

"What would they all think of us if they could see us this minute?"

"Just what they have thought for a long time."

I laughed. "How true that is, t