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Gadabout had to make quite a detour to get around some shad-net poles before she could head in toward the Brandon wharf; and her roundabout course gave time for a thought or two upon the famous old river plantation. Starting but a few years after those first colonists landed at Jamestown Island, the story of Brandon is naturally a long one.
Following this for a few hundred yards, we found ourselves at last beside the bridge we long had sought. Standing on the upper deck, we could look down stream to the place where our houseboat had been stopped by the row of pilings. We had practically circumnavigated the island. While making Gadabout fast to some convenient pilings, we heard gay voices and the rumble of wheels on the bridge.
As Gadabout slowly moved along, she occasionally got out of the channel into the shallows, in spite of chart and sounding-pole; and more than once she struck bottom. But she always discovered the channel and scrabbled back into it before the soft mud, even aided by the falling tide, could get a good hold of her. No, not quite always was she so fortunate.
The tide was hurrying up-stream and the wind was hurrying down-stream, and old Powhatan was much troubled. Gadabout rolled awkwardly among the white-caps but continued to make headway. Pocahontas, the big river steamer, was coming down-stream. We could see her making a landing at a wharf above us where a little mill puffed away and a barge was loading.
We never became discouraged and are quite sure yet that we should have found the blue dog's head if we could have gone on searching. But by this time the summer was waning, and on up the river was much yet for Gadabout to see. It was a long visit that we had made at the island, yet one that had grown in interest as in days.
However, at two places islands were shown where there seemed scarcely room in the creek for islands and Gadabout too; and if we had also to throw in a few cypress stumps for good measure, our prospects for visiting Weyanoke by the chickens-and-geese route were indeed not promising. But we knew Gadabout and how we had taken the craft almost everywhere that people had told us she could not go.
Gadabout showed little interest in the strange boat and its doings; and, unconcernedly turning her back, headed up the river. Of course buoys were all very well and she found them quite a help in getting about; but all this fussy shifting of them by a few feet mattered little to her, for she was on the wrong side of them most of the time anyway.
Altogether, Gadabout fumed and fussed so much here, pitching about in the choppy water, jerking her ropes, and battering her big neighbour, that it was a relief to all concerned when she got her oil aboard, cast off her ropes, and, giving the schooner a last vindictive dig in the ribs, set off up the river. Even after getting away from the schooner there was not much to be seen at the landing.
"A walk wi' that fine soger from t' Manor!" roared Bramber furiously. "You'll be sorry yet, you barefaced gadabout! Must I tell you again that t' man's a villain?" The girl wrenched her arm from Bramber's grasp, and blazed defiance from her beautiful eyes. "He knows how to respect a woman what you don't!" she retorted hotly. "So I don't respect you, my angel?" shouted her stepfather.
My father usually went down four times, in the course of the twelve months, but he had the reputation of a gadabout, and was thought by many people to leave home quite as much as he ought to do.
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