“Yes: we may as well be moving. It must be twelve o’clock by this time,” added Lon, as he looked at his watch; but it was so dark he could not see a figure on the dial. “Do you expect to get to New York in this boat, Lon?” asked Matt, as he seated himself in the stand-room. “Of course I do: what’s to prevent? It don’t leak, and there is water all the way to New York.” “But you don’t know how to manage a boat any more than I do,” said Matt, to whom this seemed to be a difficulty. “It is easy enough to manage her; and, if I don’t know how, I can soon learn,” replied the master spirit of the enterprise. “I have seen how the thing is done, and I’m pretty sure that I can do it.” “But your father would never let you have a boat, or even sail in this one.” “Though he has been to sea for thirty years of his life, he is afraid of a sail-boat. He says he can handle a ship, but not one of these little things.” “If we are going, why don’t we go?” asked Matt. “Because you don’t hoist the sail.” “I don’t know any thing about the sail, and I don’t believe I can hoist it. If Wade Brooks was here, he could do it; and he knows how to sail the boat, for he learned of his father. I heard some one say that he is a good boatman.” “But Wade Brooks isn’t here; and I am glad he is not,” replied Lon. “He is a goody; and I’ll half kill him, if I ever see him again, for telling old Phil Garlick that we licked him for not stealing peaches.” Matt went to the sail, and began to fumble it over in the darkness; but he could make nothing of it. On the whole, he was a rather stupid fellow, and he was not likely to learn any thing in the dark. He could not undo the sail; and he gave up the task in a moment in despair. Then Lon tried his hand, and succeeded in removing the stops. After trying all the ropes about the mast (for the boat was a sloop), he found the halyards. By observing what part of the sail moved when he pulled at these lines, he found which was the peak, and which was the throat halyard. Giving one to Matt, he heaved on the other; and at last they managed to get the sail up, though not in very good shape. “Now you take an oar, Matt, and shove her out from the shore, while I mind the helm,” said Lon, as he assumed the duties of skipper. There was no wind in the creek; and Matt worked the boat out into the river with the oar. As soon as she had passed a wooded point, the sail took the breeze, and the boat heeled over so as to scare Matt half out of his wits; for he had hardly ever been out in a sail-boat. “Mind what you are about, Lon!” exclaimed Matt. “You will upset her, and then where shall we be?” “In the water,” coolly replied Lon. “But I don’t want to be in the water.” “Nor I either; and I don’t think there is any more danger of it than there is of the sky falling. The boat is doing very well.”