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Updated: May 26, 2025
While the fog had hidden the harbour he had supposed that not more than half a dozen craft were within sight, but now, between mouth and causeway, fully two dozen sailboats and launches dotted the surface. Over his shoulder was a little hamlet that was doubtless Vineyard Haven. Facing him was a larger community, and he decided that that would be Oak Bluffs.
Luckily this boatyard was near the upper part of the city, so that they did not have to pass along the entire water front, in constant danger of a spill from the many vessels moving about, great tows of coal barges such as they had seen on the river many times, ocean steamers, ferry boats, sailboats and numerous other river craft propelled by steam, gasoline or sails.
I was in a most examining and critical mood that summer, looking into the nature and significance of many things, and was sitting one day in the shed of the maker of sailboats, where a half-dozen characters of the village were gathered, when some turn in the conversation brought up the nature of man.
The lecture was to be in the grove at three o'clock in the afternoon. In the forenoon, boats were seen coming from east and west and north excursion-boats laden with pilgrims; sailboats, rowboats, skiffs, and even birch-bark canoes bearing red men. The people came also in carts and wagons, and on horseback. An audience of five thousand confronted the lecturer.
The fishermen of the Georgian Bay, accustomed to venture out with their open sailboats in weather that forces the big lake schooners to shelter, know absolutely nothing about canoes. Dick and I made an eight-mile run from the Fox island to Killarney in a trifling sea, to be cheered during our stay at the latter place by doleful predictions of an early drowning. And this from a seafaring community.
And I rather pity the boys that lived by the sea. They had a good time in their way, I suppose, with sailboats and things, but the ocean is a poor excuse for a swimming-hole. They say salt-water is easier to swim in; kind of bears you up more. Maybe so, but I never could see it; and even so, if it does, that slight advantage is more than made up for by the manifold disadvantages entailed.
The work that Field secured for him was the work of painting those little pictures on the lacquered surface of iron safes, those little oval landscapes between the lines of red and gold lettering landscapes, rugged gorges, ocean steamships under all sail, mountain lakes with sailboats careening upon their surfaces, the boat indicated by two little triangular dabs of Chinese white, one for the sail itself and the other for its reflection in the water.
While he was down there, hunting for it, his brother and I watched the yacht and the two smaller sailboats behind us. The yacht and the boat which came from the direction of Rogers's Island were so situated that a line drawn between them would have formed the base of a triangle at the apex of which was the "Hoppergrass." The other small boat was half a mile or more behind the yacht.
It would take some time yet to bring the nearest of the sailing fleet to the scene. Signals had been sprung to the steam-launch fleet, but the launches were far down the bay, and many minutes must pass before relief could be looked for from that quarter. Two or three of the sailboats would, in fact, be at hand first.
I recall the trip from the ship to the wharf, in one of the little sailboats then used for the purpose, rather because of later experiences than because of the first one. I have no purpose here to write a history of those busy days, filled as they were with absorbing interest, with much that was pathetic and not a little that was amusing.
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