CHAPTER VI.

DOWN THE RIVER.

“Now we are all right,” said Lon, as he stepped into the boat.

“I don’t think any one has seen us,” added Matt, following his companion.

“No one could have seen us.”

“Shall we start now?”

“Yes: we may as well be moving. It must be twelve o’clock by this time,” added Lon, as he looked at his watch; but it was so dark he could not see a figure on the dial.

“Do you expect to get to New York in this boat, Lon?” asked Matt, as he seated himself in the stand-room.

“Of course I do: what’s to prevent? It don’t leak, and there is water all the way to New York.”

“But you don’t know how to manage a boat any more than I do,” said Matt, to whom this seemed to be a difficulty.

“It is easy enough to manage her; and, if I don’t know how, I can soon learn,” replied the master spirit of the enterprise. “I have seen how the thing is done, and I’m pretty sure that I can do it.”

“But your father would never let you have a boat, or even sail in this one.”

“Though he has been to sea for thirty years of his life, he is afraid of a sail-boat. He says he can handle a ship, but not one of these little things.”

“If we are going, why don’t we go?” asked Matt.

“Because you don’t hoist the sail.”

“I don’t know any thing about the sail, and I don’t believe I can hoist it. If Wade Brooks was here, he could do it; and he knows how to sail the boat, for he learned of his father. I heard some one say that he is a good boatman.”

“But Wade Brooks isn’t here; and I am glad he is not,” replied Lon. “He is a goody; and I’ll half kill him, if I ever see him again, for telling old Phil Garlick that we licked him for not stealing peaches.”

Matt went to the sail, and began to fumble it over in the darkness; but he could make nothing of it. On the whole, he was a rather stupid fellow, and he was not likely to learn any thing in the dark. He could not undo the sail; and he gave up the task in a moment in despair. Then Lon tried his hand, and succeeded in removing the stops. After trying all the ropes about the mast (for the boat was a sloop), he found the halyards. By observing what part of the sail moved when he pulled at these lines, he found which was the peak, and which was the throat halyard. Giving one to Matt, he heaved on the other; and at last they managed to get the sail up, though not in very good shape.

“Now you take an oar, Matt, and shove her out from the shore, while I mind the helm,” said Lon, as he assumed the duties of skipper.

There was no wind in the creek; and Matt worked the boat out into the river with the oar. As soon as she had passed a wooded point, the sail took the breeze, and the boat heeled over so as to scare Matt half out of his wits; for he had hardly ever been out in a sail-boat.

“Mind what you are about, Lon!” exclaimed Matt. “You will upset her, and then where shall we be?”

“In the water,” coolly replied Lon.

“But I don’t want to be in the water.”

“Nor I either; and I don’t think there is any more danger of it than there is of the sky falling. The boat is doing very well.”

The wind was north-west, and the course of the river was about south at the place where the adventurers embarked; and it was not very difficult to make the boat go after she felt the breeze. Lon had a tolerable idea of the handling of the tiller; for he had tried his hand at it in a stolen sail in this old boat. As long as it was plain sailing, he was likely to do very well. He experimented with the sail and the helm till he got the hang of them. When a bend of the river made the course south-west, he soon learned to haul in the sheet. The wind was so light that the boat did not make more than two miles an hour, and, as long as the skipper kept the old craft in the middle of the river, there was nothing to prevent her from going, and it was not very perilous navigation.

“I can handle her first-rate now,” said Lon, when the boat had been moving about half an hour. “Long before we get to the Sound, I shall know all about this business.”

“It will be another thing when we get out of the river, and we have to go out to sea,” croaked Matt.

“What odds does it make whether we are in the river, or on the sound? Both of them are water; and the boat will go as long as she has any wind.”

“Suppose the wind comes from the wrong way: what are you going to do then?” inquired Matt.

“I know how to do it then. You keep her zigzagging towards the point where you want to go.”

“I have heard my father tell about some kind of a bad place which the steamboats have to go through when they go to New York: how will you get through that?” And Matt thought he had given Lon a poser this time.

“That’s Hell Gate; and I don’t intend to go through that, for it’s near New York; and we can go from there in some other way.”

Lon was entirely satisfied that he could take the boat as far as the dangerous place. Matt was getting tired of sailing in the night, when he could only see where the river was; and the air was cold and disagreeable. He had on his thin clothes, and was not fitted out for a sea-voyage in the night. Besides, he was sleepy; for he had not closed his eyes that night. He gaped till he was in danger of throwing his jaw out of joint.

“What ails you, Matt?” asked Lon.

“I have got about enough of this thing,” replied Matt, with another fearful gape. “I am tired and sleepy, and I am almost froze.”

“You can go to sleep if you wish to do so,” replied Lon, who was dressed in thick clothes, and was quite comfortable in spite of the chill of the air.

“I can’t go to sleep while I am shivering with the cold,” replied Matt; and his whole frame shook as he spoke.

“Get into the cuddy, then, if you are cold. There was some hay in it the last time I was in the boat. You can bury yourself in it, and get warm,” said Lon, afraid that the discomfort of his companion might wreck the expedition.

“I don’t want to be in that cuddy when the boat is going,” whined Matt, his teeth chattering all the time. “Suppose she should hit on a rock, and sink: what would become of me?”

“You would be likely to get wet.”

“I should be likely to get drowned.”

“Why don’t you stir yourself? you can get warm if you will thrash your arms, or exercise yourself in some way. Get into the cuddy: there is no danger of rocks. If we should hit one, it wouldn’t do any harm. We are not going fast enough to break any thing.”

Matt was so cold that he was tempted to try the cuddy. He went to the door, and found that it was fastened. He tried to push it in, and to pull it out; but it resisted all his efforts. The iron hook on the inside held it as firm as though the door had been an immovable body.

“Break it in, if you can’t open it,” said Lon.

“I can’t break it in: I have tried.”

“Take one of the oars, and jam it through the board.”

“I don’t want to spoil the door,” replied Matt. “If it comes on to rain we shall want it.”

“But, if you can’t get into the cuddy, what good will it do us if it does rain?” demanded Lon impatiently; for he did not like Matt’s way of dealing with difficulties. “Smash it in.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Try it and see,” persisted Lon.

“I tell you I can’t,” snarled Matt.

“You are nothing but a baby, Matt Swikes,” added Lon, his patience all gone. “Here, hold this tiller, and I will open that door, or make a hole through the bottom of the boat.”

“I don’t know how to steer her,” pleaded Matt.

“I don’t want you to steer: she will steer herself, if you will hold this stick just as it is now.”

Matt took the tiller; and Lon seized the oar, with which he struck a heavy blow, driving the handle through the door. A second and a third time he applied this battering-ram to the impediment; and the cuddy was open to the admission of the runaways.

“Now you can go in, and stow yourself away in the hay, Matt,” said Lon triumphantly.

“You have smashed the door into splinters, so there is nothing to keep the cold out,” growled Matt, as he gave up the tiller to Lon.

“You can get in out of the wind, and it will be warmer there than it is here,” added the skipper. “There is plenty of hay there, and you can make yourself comfortable.”

“I will try it,” said Matt, as he moved forward for this purpose.

We left Wade Brooks in this very cuddy; but, in spite of this rude onslaught on his abode, he did not make himself known to the incendiaries. Yet he was still in the cuddy, and understood the situation perfectly. He had slept soundly up to the time when Lon battered down the door. He woke in mortal terror. He saw the dim light through the hole which had been made by the oar. He was afraid the oar might hit him; and he retreated as far as he could into the bow of the boat, and stowed himself away between the mast and the stem, or as much of himself as the space would permit, taking his spare clothes with him. Lon made so much noise that he did not hear Wade move from his position.

Wade had plenty of hay in the bow; and, by the time Matt was ready to take possession of the cuddy, he was comfortably settled in his new quarters. As soon as he heard the voices of the persons in the boat, he knew who they were; but he was not anxious to make himself known, for he was afraid Lon would take to pounding him. There was room enough in the cuddy for both of them, and without either knowing the other was there, unless an accident betrayed his presence.

Wade Brooks could not help thinking what would happen in the morning when his fellow-voyagers found that he was in the boat. Lon was a bully: he was such at school and on the playground. He had treated Wade like a tyrant. Wade began to think whether he could not do as a plucky little fellow did at school the winter before,--stand his ground, and in the end whip the bully. He was in the boat with him, and there was no chance to escape. He would try it; and he went to sleep thinking how to do it.