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Looking backward across the marshes, we could see the white railing on Gadabout's upper deck and could catch the flutter of her flags through the openings in the trees. As we neared Westover, a slope led to higher land and to a riverward, side entrance to the grounds. Passing through this, a tangle of vines swinging with the great iron gate, we followed the walk toward the house.
But it was the high bank that, after a while, was responsible for Gadabout's ceasing to take any course at all. We came about a bend and saw, just ahead, a little cove. There were trees crowding close, rich pines and cedars and bright-beaded holly. One tree leaned far out over the water, and beneath it two row-boats were drawn up to the bank.
Steadily back and forth he paced the rail; steadily, silently, we floated down the stream. And the silence of our going took hold of us, as we sat lazily in the bow. How in keeping it all seemed with the quiet of the day, the calm of the stream, and the stillness of the woods! And how out of keeping now seemed Gadabout's noisy entrance into that tranquil scene!
In the morning the sun and the mist filled our little harbour with a golden shimmer, and all the marsh reeds were quivering in the radiance. The blue herons were winging out to the river, and the doves were weaving spells round and round the dormer-windowed cottage on the hill. Gadabout's household was early astir ready for the run up Kittewan Creek.
Now Gadabout's steering-wheel was counting spokes to starboard; she headed diagonally up the river toward the northern shore, and we were soon nearing the historic island.
Although that honeymoon was almost three centuries gone, and there was nothing left at Varina to tell of it, yet somehow our thoughts quickened and Gadabout's engines slowed as we sailed along the romantic site. To be sure, to keep up the spirit of romance one has to overlook a good deal.
But chills and fever never came to Gadabout's household, though the dog-day sun beat upon the waste of reeds and rushes about us and though striped-legged mosquitoes were our nearest and most attentive neighbours. Fortunately, the mosquitoes did not feel that hospitality required them to call upon the strangers or to show them any attention except in the evening.
When we looked from Gadabout's windows next morning, a dense fog had blotted out all of our creek country except that which was close in about us. But what was left was so beautiful as to more than make up for the loss. Nature, like most other women, looks particularly well through a filmy veil.
The material for her Thanksgiving dinner was all aboard: part of it canned and boxed as the steamer had just brought it from Norfolk; and the rest of it, and the best of it, plump and gobbling on the stern. But Gadabout's preparations for the day had not stopped here.
Toward evening when there came a gentle bump upon Gadabout's guard and the rattle of a chain upon her cleat, we went out to see what the supply boat had brought. As soon as we heard the troubled sputtering, "An' I mos' give up gittin' anything," we knew that the little shore-boat was a nautical horn of plenty. And so she proved as her cargo came aboard to an accompaniment of running comment.
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