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Updated: April 30, 2025
He could hear the swish of the waters, white at her foot; he could see the wet sail, the bucketing bows, the fore-deck awash. She would pass bang beneath his feet. He could see no man at the helm only the jumping bowsprit, the thrashing foot, and that huge lug-sail, bellying over the water. Suddenly his mind flamed.
Then on turning a bend of the stream there was a waft of warm wind to fan their cheeks, when the sailors forward stepped the mast, and hoisted the yard of the lug-sail, which filled out at once, the rowers laid in their dripping oars, which seemed to shed diamonds and pearls back into the stream, and away they glided among the glories of the low flat land, through which streams seemed to run like veins, forming a perfect maze of waterways, each if possible more beautiful than the other, while proving wonderfully similar in width and depth, so much so that at last, after winding round bend after bend of the last stream they had entered, the doctor turned suddenly to their guide and said
Then we pushed off, hoisted the slender mast, set the smallest lug-sail that ever a sailor smiled at, and, myself at the helm, and that golden youth amidships, away we drifted under thickets of drooping canes tasselled with yellow catkin-flowers, up the blue alley of the water into the broader open river beyond with its rapid flow and crowding boats, the white city front now towering clear before us.
In a couple of hours they rounded Point de Leroily, and ran for the harbour. By hugging the quay in the channel to the left of the bar, they were sure of getting in, though the tide was low. The boat was docile to the lug-sail and the helm. As they were beating in they saw a large yacht running straight across a corner of the bar for the channel. It was Warren Gasgoyne's Kismet.
Sun and wind had darkened his face, and his pale brown beard curled meagre and untrimmed on a cheek and chin that in forty years had never felt a razor. Some miles away in the direction in which he was looking, the broadening sunlight had struck and brightened the single red lug-sail of a boat whose unseen hull, for all the eye could see, was coming across the green land on a dry keel.
When he heard the swish of the green waters cleaving before her keel, he put his helm hard down. "Hail them, Blob!" he screamed, and scrambling forward brought the lug-sail down with a rattle. "Boat ahoy" a voice from the frigate "who are you?" Blob stood in the bows, one hand on the flapping jib. "Oi'm Blob Oad what killed Nabowlin Bownabaardie," he yelled.
The liquor which was in the cabin I gave in charge to the midshipman who was sent with me; and, having completely stowed our boat, and prepared her with a good lug-sail, we made her fast with a couple of stout tow-ropes, and veered her astern, with four men in her, keeping on our course in the supposed track of the frigate till daylight.
Under the circumstances Captain Strong decided to raise the little lug-sail neatly rolled round its mast, and this latter being stepped, the sail was unfurled, and in a few minutes they were gliding rapidly on, shipping a little water from time to time, but no more than could be easily mastered and kept down. Where to steer was not in their choice.
Rigged with a movable mast stepped almost amid-ships, and a big lug-sail, these greyhounds of the lakes were, for passengers in our hero's time, often the only means of water transport between Quebec and Little York. As important factors in the transport of soldiers and munitions in the war of 1812, they deserve description.
Colville had turned away and was looking northward toward the creek, known as Maiden's Grave, running through the marshes to the river. A large lug-sail broke the flat line of the horizon, though the boat to which it belonged was hidden by the raised dyke. "Would she?" inquired Colville, absent-mindedly, without taking his eyes from the sail which was creeping slowly toward them.
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