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Updated: May 21, 2025
"Let fall!" This time the two new men guessed fairly well. They went through the motions of allowing their toothpick oars to fall into row-locks. "Now, at the outset, take your strokes from my count," directed Mr. Trotter. "One, two three, four, five, six, seven " And so on.
After three or four quick strokes I jerked the oars out of the row-locks, jumped into the water knee-deep, and wading dragged the boat backwards as far as she would float, when the receding surf let her gently down upon the sand, and before the next wave the servant had taken the bow and I the stern and lifted her high and dry upon the beach.
On the threshold, framed in light, stood his ward, gazing after him. And the minister gazed at her. From the bay came the sound of oars in row-locks. A boat was approaching the wharf. And suddenly from the boat came a hail. "Halloo! Ahoy, dad! Is that you?" There was an answering shout from the wharf; a shout of joy. Then a rattle of oars and a clamor of talk.
In the great stillness before the bursting out of the thunderstorm they could hear the sound of oars working regularly in their row-locks. The sound approached steadily, and Dain, looking through the branches, could see the faint shape of a big white boat. A woman's voice said in a cautious tone "There is the place where you may land white men; a little higher there!"
Neither did they notice for a while where they had drifted, for a stiff wind had risen and was drawing down the creek. It was Betty who first realised their situation. "Oh, look where we are!" she cried, seizing the oars, and placing them in the row-locks. "We can never get back against this wind, and the water is getting rougher all the time. I believe it is going to rain."
"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first entered the village. "Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply. "Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who was lounging about the town dock. "At Burridge's," he replied.
The call was heard, for the oars rested a moment in the row-locks, and then pulled in towards the island. It was two boats from the town, in the foremost of which we could now make out the figures of Captain Nutter and Binny Wallace's father. We shrunk back on seeing him. "Thank God!" cried Mr. Wallace, fervently, as he leaped from the wherry without waiting for the bow to touch the beach.
Rinkitink now took his seat in the silver-lined craft and the boy came last, pushing off the boat as he sprang aboard, so that it floated freely upon the water. "Well, here we go for Gilgad!" exclaimed the King, picking up the oars and placing them in the row-locks.
On moonlight nights a shadowy ship was sometimes seen standing off-and-on, or when fogs encompassed sea and shore the noise of oars rising and falling in their row-locks could be heard muffled and indistinctly during the night. Whatever foundation there might have been for these stories, it was certain that a more weird and desolate-looking spot could not have been selected for their theatre.
To those who have rowed only clumsy country-boats, with their awkward row-locks and wretched oars, slimy, dirty, and leaking, trailing behind tags and streamers of pond-weed, or who have only experimented with that most uncivilized style of digging up the water called paddling, the real pleasure of rowing is unknown. Grover's Head went astern; Nahant grew more and more distinct.
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