Adventure stories; Puget Sound Region (Wash.) -- Juvenile fiction; Ranch life -- Juvenile fiction; Young men -- Juvenile fiction
The other boat had drawn almost level with them and came surging along
some forty yards away, rising and falling, with the foam piled up about
her bows, and a great spread of canvas that swung up and down as she
rolled on either side.
"Hello!" shouted Harry. "Where are you going?"
"North," was the laconic answer.
Harry chuckled as he turned to Frank. "Well, as dad will be in Everett
by this time, I don't see why they shouldn't come along with us as far
as they like, but we'll let them draw ahead before we get up the
spinnaker. I'd rather they didn't notice I had to set it alone."
The other boat forged past them, and she was growing dim ahead when
Harry pulled out a bundle of canvas from beneath the side deck.
"It's an extra big jib we carry in light winds, but it makes a good
spinnaker," he said. "You'll have to keep her straight before the wind,
because it's a mighty awkward thing to set."
Frank took the helm and watched his companion as he shook the big sail
out all over the boat, after which he led a rope fastened to one corner
of it through a block at the end of a long spar that lay along the deck.
He thrust this out over her side and made its inner end fast to the foot
of the mast.
"A spinnaker boom always goes forward of the shrouds and you lead the
guy aft outside them," he said. "Get hold of it and stick fast. It's
easy so far, but in a minute the circus will begin. You want two pairs
of hands to set a spinnaker in a breeze of wind."
Frank glanced at the short seas which surged by, glittering in the
moonlight flecked with wisps of snowy froth, and it struck him by the
way the boat swung over them with the foam boiling about her that she
was carrying sufficient canvas in her mainsail. Then Harry, calling to
him to mind his steering, hauled on a halliard and a mass of thrashing
canvas rose up the mast. It blew out like a half-filled balloon, lifting
up the boom, which was run out on the opposite side to the mainsail, and
seemed bent on soaring skyward over the masthead. After that the boom
swung forward with a crash, the mast strained and rattled, and Frank
feared that the great loose sail would tear it out of the boat. He saw
Harry lifted off his feet and flung upon the deck, after which the
forward part of the boat was swept by flying ropes and billowy folds of
canvas, among which his companion seemed to be futilely crawling to and
fro. Presently his voice reached Frank hoarse and breathless.
"Haul on the guy!" he cried. "She'll pitch me over or whip the mast out
if this goes on."
Frank dragged at the rope with all his might, but he could not get an
inch of it in, and he dared not take his right hand off the tiller for
fear of bringing the big mainboom over upon the spinnaker, which would
probably have caused a catastrophe. Indeed, he fancied that one was
inevitable already, since it seemed impossible that Harry could control
the big loose sail which was now wildly hurling itself aloft.
"I can't move it!" he shouted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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