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Updated: June 16, 2025
Somehow the cat-boat, anchored fifty yards out and straining back from her moorings, would not allow herself to be approached. Aladdin saw this and tried to go back, catching many crabs in the earnestness of his endeavor. Then the little girl, without being told, perceived that matters were not entirely in the hands of man, and began to look wistfully from Aladdin to the shore.
He saw, in the black night, what none but a sailor's eyes would have seen, a thing not visible, but divined, coming along on the bosom of the river; and his ears saw it the clearer as that little cry continued now stopped, now stifled, now rising, now nearly piercing; and then there was a growl, momentary and loud, and a rattle as of feet over wood, and a stroke or thud, or heavy concussion, and then a white thing rose up against the universal ink and rushed on the little scow, sucking water as it came the cat-boat under full sail.
They also made a boom and then rigged a single sail, somewhat after the fashion of the cat-boat of the present day. This would have been an impossible task to them, had not "The Galleon" been so well provided with axes, saws, hammers, other valuable tools, and cord and nails. The mast could be taken down in an emergency, but they were all of the opinion that the sail would draw, and draw well.
Mandeville indiscriminately distributed itself on piers, large and small, bath-house tops, trees, and craft of all kinds, from pirogue, dory, and pine-raft to pretentious cat-boat and shell-schooner. Mandeville cheered and strained its eyes after all the boats, but chiefly was its attention directed to "La Juanita." "Ah, voila, eet is ahead!" "Mais non, c'est un autre!" "La Juanita! La Juanita!"
In the morning they were all up very early, and the stranger, who proved to be a seafaring man with bright blue eyes, said that, as his cat-boat seemed to be riding all right at its anchorage, he did not care to go out after her just yet. Any time during flood-tide would do for him, and he had some business that he wanted to attend to as soon as possible.
Then he caught sight of the name on the stern. "Hopper-grass! Hoppergrass! Where didger git that air name, Lem? Invent it yerself?" "No, I didn't," said the Captain. He was very much irritated, and he did not look around. "Well, then, if 'taint yer own inventin', I jes as soon tell yer if yer ask ME, that it's the most ding-busted, tom-fool name I ever see on a cat-boat in all my born days."
"Tobogganing is a little out of season," said his niece, laughing heartily. Mr. Cooke brushed himself off, picked up the glasses which he had dropped in his flight and pushed them into my hands. Then he pointed lakeward with bulging eyes. "Crocker, old man," he said in a loud whisper, "they tell me that is an Asquith cat-boat."
They had lived on board altogether and made themselves very comfortable indeed. There was a light little flat-bottomed boat for tender, and the white cat-boat itself had been newly painted with gilt lettering across the stern, Starlight, Riverport. "I can ask the Out-of-Door Club one day next week," announced Betty, with great enthusiasm. "Isn't she clean and pretty?
He's the smartest feller in a cat-boat that ever handled a tiller, and he's won more races than any man on the Cape, I cal'late. Phil asked him and me if we'd ever sailed on an ice-boat, and, when we said we hadn't he asks if we won't take a sail with him on the river next morning. We didn't want to put him to so much trouble on our account, but he said: "Not at all.
Sailing is tremendously popular at all American seaside resorts; and lolling over the ropes of a "cat-boat" is another form of active exercise that finds innumerable votaries. Rowing is probably practised in the older States with as much zest as in Great Britain, and the fresh-water facilities are perhaps better.
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