Capwell Wyckoff - The Mercer Boys' Cruise in the Lassie

“And why not?”

“Because we’ll never find it again, and we’ll have to hang you to the mast and shake you back and forth every time we have a fog,” said Jim, soberly.

“Meaning that I’ll swallow the bell, I suppose?”

“Something like that.”

The boys turned in around ten o’clock, thoroughly tired out. Before Don put out the light he looked at the barometer.

“Going down,” he muttered. “Doesn’t look any too good for the morning.”

The last thing that Terry remembered was lying on the gently heaving deck, looking up at a multitude of soft glowing stars. Then a deep sleep fell upon him.

Terry Mackson was dreaming. He dreamed that he was sitting on a bench and that Jim was hurling buckets of water over him. The bench was heaving up and down and the water continued to pour over him. The part that made him angry was the fact that he couldn’t seem to get up. And now, to make matters much worse, someone, he couldn’t see who it was, was shaking him.

He woke up with a start, to find Jim bent over him shaking him roughly, and shouting something in his ear. Jim was saying, “Get up, it’s raining,” and Terry, struggling to his feet, found that Jim was putting things mildly. The rain was coming down in sheets, and Don was heaving the bedding down the companionway. Terry took a brief look before going below.

The millions of stars that he had looked at earlier in the evening had all disappeared, and only a dense, heavy gray sky hovered over the sloop now. The waves, which had been so gentle, now reared angry heads alongside the little craft, and the deck was soaked with the spray. The world had turned completely upside down in the farm boy’s eyes.

“Go on down,” Don shouted. Terry obeyed, but Don ran forward and examined the anchor cable. When he came back downstairs, he was wringing wet. He slipped the companionway shut and Jim closed and bolted the portholes.

“The anchor is holding all right,” Don reported. “I think we can weather it.” He slipped out of his pajamas and vigorously rubbed himself down with a rough towel. “Well, we’ll sleep indoors, like Terry wanted us to, sooner than we expected.”

“I never saw a storm come up so fast,” declared Terry.

“I’ll bet you didn’t see it at all,” Jim retorted, rubbing down. “Judging by the way I had to shake you, you didn’t see much of anything.”

In the light of the electric lamp the boys changed into dry night clothes, and sat on the edge of the bunks talking. The experience was slightly weird to Terry, but the Mercer boys did not seem to mind it. The sloop tossed madly, causing dishes to clatter inside the cupboard and other things to rattle and clink all over the boat. The fog bell clashed and clanged with each roll of the boat, and the electric lamp oscillated continually. Each time the sloop slid down a wave it pulled with a jerk on the anchor cable. To Terry, as he looked around, it seemed like being boxed in a trunk, at the mercy of the waves that slapped overhead.

“Well,” yawned Don, at last. “No use sitting up any longer, I suppose. We’ll see how things look in the morning. Do you feel all right, Terry?”

“Sure I do. Why?”

“I was just thinking that if you are going to get seasick at all, you’ll get that way tonight,” grinned Don, as he put out the lamp.

“Thanks for your cheerful thoughts,” grumbled Terry, as Jim snickered.

Terry was the first to awake in the morning, and he lay for a moment looking around the interior of the Lassie. The storm had evidently not subsided, for the floor continued to heave and sink, and the continual clinking and bumping went on. The portholes were still wet and a faint trickle of water ran out from the bottom of the engine. Outside, he could hear the whistle of the wind and the slap of the waves, and now and then a particularly big one ran across the deck. The brothers were still asleep.

At seven-thirty they woke up together and the three boys got dressed. Getting breakfast was no easy job, and Jim was hard put to it, especially in the matter of making coffee. Don, clad in oilskins, went on deck and examined the anchor cable, which he found to be bearing the strain very well. It was decided that they would cruise along with the storm during the morning and see what they thought best to do later in the day.

On the side of the centerboard casing, which came up from the floor of the cabin, dividing it somewhat, a board on hinges served as a table. This board, when raised, made a good substitute for a regular table, and on this Jim placed the eggs, bacon and coffee. The meal was a gay one because the food slipped back and forth with the rolling of the sloop. On one occasion, just as Terry was about to spear a piece of egg, his plate slipped downhill to the other side of the board, where Don was eating.

“Would you mind giving me back my plate?” Terry asked.

A particularly violent roll dumped the remaining egg from his plate and spread it dismally all over the board. Don pushed the plate back to him gravely.

“How about my breakfast, too?” Terry asked.

“Oh, do you want that too? You only asked for your plate, you know.”

All three boys pitched into the job of washing plates and then they pulled in the anchor and continued the cruise. Terry, outfitted in a coat of oilskins, enjoyed the rough sailing much more than the smooth. The little ship dipped joyously down into the troughs, plunging its nose beneath the waves and flinging them right and left in a smother of foam. Then, riding magnificently up the side of a gray green monster, it rushed with speed down the watery hill, to bury its nose in another small mountain. Quantities of water rushed across the deck, soaking them in spite of their oilskins, but as the weather was warm, the boys did not mind it. At times Terry was allowed to hold on to the tiller, a job that amounted to something, and he found it vastly different from the easy job it had been on the day before, when the water had been smooth.

They brought a portable radio on deck and listened to it throughout most of the morning, but the static was very bad and they finally gave up. After several unsuccessful attempts at playing a losing game of gin rummy against the wind, the boys decided it was easier just to watch the sea and the dark clouds as they scudded across the sky.

Another meal was eaten under conditions similar to those of the breakfast, and the sail continued. The day was dark and the sky threatening, and Don thought seriously of running inshore and tying up at a dock until the blow was over. Late in the afternoon they decided to swim.

“Want to go in for a real swim?” Jim asked Terry.

Terry looked toward the shore. “Where is a beach?” he asked.

“Jim doesn’t mean at a beach,” Don supplied. “He means to go swimming from the boat. Like to try it?”

“With the waves running like that?” Terry demanded.

“Sure thing. It will be the best swim you ever had.”

Terry was not sure, but as the Mercer boys got into their trunks he slowly followed, secretly appalled at the size of the waves that broke against the side of the sloop. Don was first to go over. Poised for an instant on the cabin roof, he suddenly launched out into a splendid curving dive. Right into the heart of a wave he went, to reappear some yards away, puffing.

“Oh, boy!” he called. “Get in, it’s great.”

Jim followed his brother, and Terry, whose swimming had been confined to quiet water all his life, hesitated for a few minutes before he made his plunge. Then, standing on the stern, he shot himself forward into a smother of gray-green water, instantly shooting below a small, churning mountain. An instant later he came to the surface, bobbing up and down on the waves.