By clinging like grim death to the gunwale, we just managed to keep
inside the boat, but it was exhausting work. Hector said that pirates
and other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something or
other, and hauled in the main top-jib, during severe squalls, and thought
we ought to try to do something of the kind; but I was for letting her
have her head to the wind.
As my advice was by far the easiest to follow, we ended by adopting it,
and contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.
The boat travelled up stream for about a mile at a pace I have never
sailed at since, and don't want to again. Then, at a bend, she heeled
over till half her sail was under water. Then she righted herself by a
miracle and flew for a long low bank of soft mud.
That mud-bank saved us. The boat ploughed its way into the middle of it
and then stuck. Finding that we were once more able to move according to
our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about like peas in a
bladder, we crept forward, and cut down the sail.
We had had enough sailing. We did not want to overdo the thing and get a
surfeit of it. We had had a sail - a good all-round exciting,
interesting sail - and now we thought we would have a row, just for a
change like.
We took the sculls and tried to push the boat off the mud, and, in doing
so, we broke one of the sculls. After that we proceeded with great
caution, but they were a wretched old pair, and the second one cracked
almost easier than the first, and left us helpless.
The mud stretched out for about a hundred yards in front of us, and
behind us was the water. The only thing to be done was to sit and wait
until someone came by.
It was not the sort of day to attract people out on the river, and it was
three hours before a soul came in sight. It was an old fisherman who,
with immense difficulty, at last rescued us, and we were towed back in an
ignominious fashion to the boat-yard.
What between tipping the man who had brought us home, and paying for the
broken sculls, and for having been out four hours and a half, it cost us
a pretty considerable number of weeks' pocket-money, that sail. But we
learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at any price.
CHAPTER XVI.
READING. - WE ARE TOWED BY STEAM LAUNCH. - IRRITATING BEHAVIOUR OF SMALL
BOATS. - HOW THEY GET IN THE WAY OF STEAM LAUNCHES.
