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The Missisque and her cargo were safe, and not a single one of the precious lives of her crew had been sacrificed; but the skipper was as dissatisfied as the skipper of a lake sloop could be; more so, probably, than if the vessel had gone to the bottom, and left him clinging for life to a lone spar on the angry waters, for men are often more reasonable under great than under small misfortunes.
The squall did its work in an instant; and before the bank director had fairly begun to tremble, the rotten mainsail of the Missisque was blown into ribbons, and the "flapping flitters" were streaming in the air. Piece after piece was detached from the bolt-rope, and disappeared in the heavy atmosphere. The sloop, in obedience to her helm, came about, and was now headed down the lake.
By the time he had disposed of the last piece of green-apple pie on board, the Missisque was before Port Rock, which was the home of the young pilot, and he saw his father's ferry-boat at the shore as he came on deck. "Will you put me ashore here, Captain John?" asked Lawry. "Yes, I will; and I'm glad to get rid of you," replied the captain testily.
"I'm very careless; but the money is safe," continued the director. "Stand by, Captain John!" suddenly shouted Lawry, with tremendous energy, as he put the helm down. The squall was coming up the lake in the track of the Missisque; a dull, roaring sound was heard astern; and all the mountain peaks had disappeared, closed in by the dense volume of black clouds.
He picked up considerable money, for a boy, by his enterprise, which, like a good son with a clear apprehension of domestic circumstances, he gave to his mother. At the time of his introduction to the reader, Lawry had just piloted a canal-boat, with movable masts, from Whitehall to Plattsburg, and was working his passage home on the "Missisque.
Procuring a wherry, and a boy to row it, he had boarded the Missisque as she passed up the lake; and, though the sloop was not a passenger-boat, Captain John had consented to land him at Shoreham. Mr. Randall was a landsman, and had a proper respect for squalls and tempests, even on a fresh-water lake.
Sherwood's party at Port Rock, he started for Burlington, where he had an engagement on the following day. Half a mile above the wharf, he came up with a schooner, which on examination proved to be the Missisque. It was a dead calm, and her new mainsail hung motionless from the gaff.
Captain John, as he was familiarly called on board the Missisque, which was the name of the sloop, was not a man to be cheated out of any portion of his dinner by the approach of a squall; and though his jaws may have moved more rapidly after the announcement of the young pilot, he did not neglect even the green-apple pies, the first of the season, prepared with care and skill by Mrs.
The sloop did not usually make more than four or five miles an hour, being deeply laden with lumber, which was piled up so high on the deck that the mainsail had to be reefed, to make room for it. The passenger, Mr. Randall, was a director of a country bank, journeying to Shoreham, about twenty miles above the point where he had embarked in the Missisque.
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