I sat straight up. “Jonathan! Let’s do it now!”
Jonathan chuckled. “My! What a hurry she’s in!”
“We couldn’t. The boat will have to be overhauled first.”
“We could do it next spring, and go up the trout streams.”
“Or in September and get the shore hunting—the salt marshes.”
“Oh, which?—which?” Already I was following our course along curving beaches and amongst the yellow marshlands. But Jonathan’s mind was working on more practical details.
“Pretty close stowing for our dunnage—still—let’s see—two guns—”
“How does that coast-line run? Where’s a map?”
All we had were some railroad maps and an old school geography—just enough to tantalize us—but we fell upon them eagerly. It is curious what a change comes over these dumb bits of colored paper at such times. Every curve of the shore, every bay and headland came to life and spoke to us—called to us.
We decided on the September plan, and for the next eleven months our casual talk was starred with inapropos remarks like these:—
“Jonathan, I know we shall forget a can-opener.”
“Better write it down while you think of it. And have you put down a hatchet?”
“Hang it! Those charts haven’t come yet!”
“What can we take to look respectable in when we go ashore?”
Meanwhile the little boat was stirred out of its long sleep in the cellar, overhauled, and painted, and shipped to a port up in Narragansett Bay. And on the last day of August we found ourselves walking down through the little town. Following the instructions of wondering small boys, we came to a gate in a board fence, opened it and let ourselves into a typical New England seaport scene—a tiny garden, ablaze with sunshine and gorgeous with the yellows and lavenders of fall flowers, and a narrow brick path, under a grape-vine arch, leading down to the sand and the wharf and the sparkling blue waters of the bay. As we passed down through the garden, we saw a little boat, bottom up, dazzling white in the sun.
“There it is!” I said, with a surge of reminiscent affection.
“That little thing!” said Jonathan. “I thought you said twelve feet.”
“Well, isn’t it? Anyway, I said _about_. And it’s big enough.”
He was spanning its length with his hands.
“Eleven foot six. Oh, I suppose she’ll do. My boat was fourteen.”