"I don't want to be drowned any more than you do, and I know my mother wouldn't want any such thing to happen to me. Of course I wouldn't go out in the Goldwing if I thought she was going to spill me into the lake," added Dory. "I have told you the worst of it, and now you can go ashore at Plattsburgh if you want to." "I am willing to take my chances if you are, Dory," replied Thad with some hesitation. "It is blowing a young hurricane to-day, and you said you should not go till the weather was fit." "I am not going to drown myself or you either, if I can help it, fellows," Dory proceeded. "I heard about the Goldwing the last time I was up here. I asked all about the drowning of the man that owned her, and a boatman who saw the whole of it told me all about it." "How long ago was it that the man was drowned?" asked Nat Long. "It was about three weeks ago. The boat lay on the bottom a week before they raised her," replied Dory. "Was it blowing hard when he was drowned?" inquired Corny. "No: it was just a good sailing-breeze. I think I know what the matter was with the boat. I believe I can make her all right, if I have not already done it; for I have been at work on her this morning." "What was the trouble with her?" asked Thad, who considered the skipper competent to put any thing to rights about a boat. "She was ballasted so that she carried a lee helm," answered Dory, as solemnly as though he settled the fate of a nation by his words. "Carried a lee helm!" exclaimed Dick Short. "Is that what the matter was?" "Carried a lee helm!" repeated Thad. "That was bad!" "Carried a lee helm! If it was bad for her, she ought to have left her lee helm on shore." "What did she carry it for?" asked Nat Long. "She carried it because she couldn't leave it behind," replied Dory. "It is a bad habit, such as some men carry with them through life, for the reason that they can't get rid of it." "I say, Dory, what is a lee helm?" asked Thad. "You know that we don't know any thing more about sailing a boat than we do about making a watch." "You used to sail Mr. Jones's boat: but we never went with you then, Dory; and we never had any chance to learn how to sail a boat," added Corny. "I have no more idea what a lee helm is than I have what the man in the moon had for dinner to-day." "That's what's the matter with all of us," added Thad, laughing. "I didn't mean to bother you, fellows; but that is just what ailed the Goldwing, and she had it bad. But any boat would have behaved in the same way if she was not properly trimmed. I don't think Mr. Lapham--that's the man that owned the Goldwing, and was drowned; I couldn't think of his name before--understood a boat very well. Look here, fellows!" Dory Dornwood pointed to a mast-hole in the deck, which had been stopped. The foremast had been moved nearly two feet aft of the place where it had been stepped by the builder.