What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise

“You’re a brick, Tom, and you shan’t be humiliated. We’ll make the outside trip. It won’t take very long, and maybe you’ll get over the worst of your sickness when we get outside.”

“If I don’t I’ll just grin and bear it,” answered Tom resolutely.

As the boat cleared the harbor and headed south, the sea grew much calmer, though the breeze continued as before. It was the choking of the channel that had made the water so “lumpy” at the harbor’s mouth. Tom was the first to observe the relief, and before the dory slipped into the calm waters of Stono Inlet he had only a trifling nausea to remind him of his suffering.

“This is the fulfillment of prophecy number one,” he said to Cal, while they were yet outside.

“What is?”

“Why this way of getting into Stono Inlet. You said our programme was likely to be ‘changed without notice,’ and this is the first change. You know it’s nearly always so. People very rarely carry out their plans exactly.”

“I suppose not,” interrupted Larry as the Stono entrance was made, “but I’ve a plan in mind that we’ll carry out just as I’ve made it, and that not very long hence, either.”

“What is it, Larry?”

“Why to pick out a fit place for landing, go ashore, build a fire, and have supper. Does it occur to you that we had breakfast at daylight and that we’ve not had a bite to eat since, though it is nearly sunset?”

As he spoke, a bend of the shore line cut off what little breeze there was, the sail flapped and the dory moved only with the tide.

“Lower away the sail,” he called to Cal and Dick, at the same time hauling the boom inboard. “We must use the oars in making a landing, and I see the place. We’ll camp for the night on the bluff just ahead.”

“Bluff?” asked Tom, scanning the shore. “I don’t see any bluff.”

“Why there – straight ahead, and not five hundred yards away.”

“Do you call that a bluff? Why, it isn’t three feet higher than the low-lying land all around it.”

“After you’ve been a month on this coast,” said Cal, pulling at an oar, “you’ll learn that after all, terms are purely relative as expressions of human thought. We call that a bluff because it fronts the water and is three feet higher than the general lay of the land. There aren’t many places down here that can boast so great a superiority to their surroundings. An elevation of ten feet we’d call high. It is all comparative.”

“Well, my appetite isn’t comparative, at any rate,” said Tom. “It’s both positive and superlative.”

“The usual sequel to an attack of seasickness, and I assure you – ”

Cal never finished his assurance, whatever it was, for at that moment the boat made her landing, and Larry, who acted as commander of the expedition, quickly had everybody at work. The boat was to be secured so that the rise and fall of the tide would do her no harm; wood was to be gathered, a fire built and coffee made.

“And I am going out to see if I can’t get a few squirrels for supper, while you fellows get some oysters and catch a few crabs if you can. Oh, no, that’s too slow work. Take the cast net, Cal, and get a gallon or so of shrimps, in case I don’t find any squirrels.”

“I can save you some trouble and disappointment on that score,” said Cal, “by telling you now that you’ll get no squirrels and no game of any other kind, unless perhaps you sprain your ankle or something and get a game leg.”

“But why not? How do you know?”

“We’re too close to Charleston. The pot-hunters haven’t left so much as a ground squirrel in these woods. I have been all over them and so I know. Better take the cartridges out of your gun and try for some fish. The tide’s right and you’ve an hour to do it in.”

Larry accepted the suggestion, and rowing the dory to a promising spot, secured a dozen whiting within half the time at disposal.

Supper was eaten with that keen enjoyment which only a camping meal ever gives, and with a crackling fire to stir enthusiasm, the boys sat for hours telling stories and listening to Dick’s account of his fishing trips along the northern shores, and his one summer’s camping in the Maine woods.

V

A RATHER BAD NIGHT

During the next two or three days the expedition worked its way through the tangled maze of big and little waterways, stopping only at night, in order that they might the sooner reach a point where game was plentiful.

At last Cal, who knew more about the matter than any one else in the party, pointed out a vast forest-covered region that lay ahead, with a broad stretch of water between.

“We’ll camp there for a day or two,” he said, “and get something besides sea food to eat. There are deer there and wild turkeys, and game birds, while squirrels and the like literally abound. I’ve hunted there for a week at a time. It’s only about six miles from here, and there’s a good breeze. We can easily make the run before night.”

Tom, who had by that time learned to handle the boat fairly well for a novice, was at the tiller, and the others, a trifle too confident of his skill perhaps, were paying scant attention to what he was doing. The stretch of water they had to cross was generally deep, as the chart showed, but there were a few shoals and mud banks to be avoided. While the boys were eagerly listening to Cal’s description of the hunting grounds ahead, the boat was speeding rapidly, with the sail trimmed nearly flat, when there came a sudden flaw in the wind and Tom, in his nervous anxiety to meet the difficulty managed to put the helm the wrong way. A second later the dory was pushing her way through mud and submerged marsh grass. Tom’s error had driven her, head on, upon one of the grass covered mud banks.

Dick was instantly at work. Without waiting to haul the boom inboard, he let go the throat and peak halyards, and the sails ran down while the outer end of the boom buried itself in the mud.

“Now haul in the boom,” he said.

“Why didn’t you wait and do that first?” asked Tom, who was half out of his wits with chagrin over his blunder.

“Because, with the centre board up, if we’d hauled it in against the wind the boat would have rolled over and we should all have been floundering.”

“But the centre board was down,” answered Tom.

“Look at it,” said Cal. “Doubtless it was down when we struck, but as we slid up into the grass it was shut up like a jackknife.”

“Stop talking,” commanded Larry, “and get to the oars. It’s now or never. If we don’t get clear of this within five minutes we’ll have to lie here all night. The tide is just past full flood and the depth will grow less every minute. Now then! All together and back her out of this!”

With all their might the four boys backed with the oars, but the boat refused to move. Dick shifted the ballast a little and they made another effort, with no result except that Tom, in his well-nigh insane eagerness to repair the damage done, managed to break an oar.

“It’s no use, fellows,” said Larry. “You might as well ship your oars. We’re stuck for all night and must make the best of the situation.”

“Can’t we get out and push her off?” asked Tom in desperation.

“No. We’ve no bottom to stand on. The mud is too soft.”

“That’s one disadvantage in a dory,” said Dick, settling himself on a thwart. “If we had a keel under us, we could have worked her free with the oars.”

“If, yes, and perhaps,” broke in Cal, who was disposed to be cheerfully philosophical under all circumstances. “What’s the use in iffing, yessing and perhapsing? We’re unfortunate in being stuck on a mud bank for the night, but stuck we are and there’s an end of that. We can’t make the matter better by wishing, or regretting, or bemoaning our fate, or making ourselves miserable in any other of the many ways that evil ingenuity has devised for the needless chastisement of the spirit. Let us ‘look forward not back, up and not down, out and not in,’ as Dr. Hale puts it. Instead of thinking how much happier we might be if we were spinning along over the water, let us think how much happier we shall be when we get out of this and set sail again. By the way, what have we on board that we can eat before the shades of night begin falling fast?”

“Well, if you will ‘look forward,’ as you’ve advised us all to do,” said Dick Wentworth, “by which I mean if you will explore the forward locker, you’ll find there a ten-pound can of sea biscuit, and half a dozen gnarled and twisted bologna sausages of the imported variety, warranted to keep in any climate and entirely capable of putting a strain upon the digestion of an ostrich accustomed to dine on tenpenny nails and the fragments of broken beer bottles.”

“Where on earth did they come from?” asked Larry. “I superintended the lading of the boat – ”

“Yes, I know you did, and I watched you. I observed that you had made no provision for shipwreck and so I surreptitiously purchased and bestowed these provisions myself. The old tars at Gloucester deeply impressed it upon my mind that it is never safe to venture upon salt water without a reserve supply of imperishable provisions to fall back upon in case of accidents like this.”

“This isn’t an accident,” said Tom, who had been silent for an unusual time; “it isn’t an accident; it’s the result of my stupidity and nothing else, and I can never – ”

“Now stop that, Tom!” commanded Cal; “stop it quick, or you’ll meet with the accident of being chucked overboard. This was a mishap that might occur to anyone, and if there was any fault in the case every one of us is as much to blame as you are. You don’t profess to be an expert sailor, and we know it. We ought some of us to have helped you by observing things. Now quit blaming yourself, quit worrying and get to work chewing bologna.”

“Thank you, Cal,” was all that Tom could say in reply, and all set to work on what Dick called their “frugal meal,” adding:

“That phrase used to fool me. I found it in Sunday School books, where some Scotch cotter and his interesting family sat down to eat scones or porridge, and I thought it suggestive of something particularly good to eat. Having the chronically unsatisfied appetite of a growing boy, the thing made me hungry.”