United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At the end he had to get down and wade bare-legged, towing the boat after him until at last Yaé announced that the centreboard had been lowered and that the boat was answering to the helm. Geoffrey clambered in dripping. He shook himself like a big dog after a swim. "Reggie could never have done that," said Yaé, with fervent admiration. "He would be afraid of catching cold."
Had it not been that the boat had a centreboard we would have made small progress. The centreboard was a novelty to us, and we could see how close it helped the little vessel to sail in the eye of the wind. The size of the lake surprised everybody and all the more when Treffle told us it was the St Lawrence. 'My, it is a big river and it is in a big country! exclaimed Mrs Auld.
You never can tell exactly what an anchor rope will do. However, if it has, we've nothing to do but haul up the centreboard and clear it." She took the centreboard rope and pulled. Frank joined her and they both pulled. The centreboard remained immovable. The Tortoise was entirely unaffected by their pulling. "Jammed," said Priscilla. "I feel a jolly sight less like that dove than I did.
Besides, Yaé really knows more about it than I do." So Geoffrey after a short lesson in steering, tacking, and the manipulation of the centreboard, piloted his host safely over to British Bay, the exclusive precinct of the temporary Embassy on the opposite shore of the lake. He then made his way round French Cape past Russia Cove to the wooden landing-stage of the Lakeside Hotel.
Frank scrambled over the centreboard case and bumped down on the floor boards on the windward side of the boat Priscilla pushed over the tiller and began to haul vigorously on the main sheet The Tortoise swept round, heeled over and rushed through the water on a broad reach. The wind, so it seemed to Frank, began to blow much harder than before.
A heavy bump followed. "Up centreboard," said Priscilla. "I knew it was shallow." Frank pulled vigorously. Another bump followed. "Bother!" said Priscilla. "We're done now." The Tortoise swept up into the wind Her sails flapped helplessly. "What's the matter?" said Miss Rutherford. "Rudder's gone," said Priscilla. "That last bump unshipped it." She held the useless tiller in her hand.
The Tortoise, nearly half full of water, still staggered towards the shore under her foresail. Priscilla hauled at the rope of the centreboard. "Run her up on the beach," she shouted. "If we do knock a hole in her it can't be helped. Oh glory, glory! look at that!"
If this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear. However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get his injured foot against anything firm he found it entangled in ropes which he could not kick away.
"Maybe she was a centreboard, sad that's where you kept the board." "The hole is there because it was worn there by one of the elephants," retorted Noah. "You get a beast like the elephant shuffling one of his fore-feet up and down, up and down, a plank for twenty-four hours a day for forty days in one of your boats, and see where your boat would be." "Thanks," said Charon, calmly.
He discovered that a sheet is, oddly enough, not an expanse of canvas, but another rope. He impressed carefully on his mind the part of the boat in which he might, under favourable circumstances, expect to find the centreboard tackle. The wind, which had dropped completely at low water, sprang up again, this time from the west, with the rising tide.
Word Of The Day