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It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain steps of infancy.
The men got into her, stepped the mast, hooked on the lug-sail, ready to hoist at my orders; and, without my bidding, had spread my boat cloak in the stern-sheets, and made a comfortable place for me to repose in.
Out of it was bulging some kind of dull white matter marbled with gray. It was a hard lump of irregular shape and about as big as a hogshead. Moran glanced over to the junk, some forty feet distant. The beach-combers were hoisting the lug-sail. Hoang was at the steering oar. "Get that stuff aboard," she commanded quietly. "That!" exclaimed Wilbur, pointing to the lump.
Pompey nodded his head, and went below; but it was some time before he returned, during which Hawkhurst became impatient. It was a very small boat which had been lowered down; it had a lug-sail and two pair of sculls in it, and was quite full when Francisco's chest and the other articles had been put in. 'Come! I have no time to wait, said Hawkhurst; 'in the boat!
"We will sail them home and land them on Saaron." The Commandant backed his boat skilfully into the passage between the walls of rock, lifted the two younger ones on board, and then stretched out a hand to the other shore to help Vashti and Annet. When all were stowed, he pushed out for an offing, and hoisted his small lug-sail, while Vashti took the tiller. The breeze blew off the shore.
There is a creek, you know, runs down from Maiden's Grave to the river." "Ah!" answered Colville thoughtfully, almost as if the creek and the large lug-sail against the sky explained something which he had not hitherto understood. "I thought he might have come with you this evening," he added, after a pause. "For I suppose everybody in Farlingford knows why we are here.
But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and rencontres, she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail.
Fortunately, there was such a sail on board, a small lug-sail made of stout canvas, and nearly new, which was intended to be substituted for the lateen on those rare occasions when the little craft might be caught in heavy weather; and this sail I now proceeded to drag up from below and bend to its yard; after which I lowered away the lateen, laid it fore and aft the deck, and made it up, securing it as well as I could by passing innumerable turns of a light warp round it; after which I firmly lashed it to the bulwarks with as many lashings as I could find pins or cleats for.
In short, we were in a highly unpleasant predicament, when a coble or row-boat, carrying one small lug-sail, hove out of the dusk to our assistance. He rounded up, lowered sail, and ran his boat alongside; and while his two hands were cutting us free of our tangle, inquired very civilly if we were strangers.
The box of fish-hooks had been jammed into the centre of a cooked breadfruit, both having been picked up by the fingers of the wind and hurled against the same tree; and the stay-sail of the Shenandoah was out on the reef, with a piece of coral carefully placed on it as if to keep it down. As for the lug-sail belonging to the dinghy, it was never seen again.
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