“Oh, that’s why the water’s so smooth.”
“Yes, so now’s our chance to eat. She’ll drift, without much help from us.”
So he kept one hand on the tiller, and we opened the lunch, sitting in the shadow of the sail. It was marvelous, with little thin sandwiches, stuffed eggs, and iced tea in thermos bottles. Every sandwich was in a little paper envelope marked: Loudet, Caterer. “Do you always deal with a caterer?”
“Him? Oh, he’s just a Frenchman that puts up lunches.”
“Rather expensive, I imagine.”
“Is he?”
“So I judge. And I know about sandwiches.”
“They’re all right?”
“I’ll say.”
“Then eat ’em.”
So we ate them, and then he lay there with his arm over the tiller and his eyes closed, smoking a cigarette. It was so hot little beads of sweat were dotted all over his upper lip, and not far from us were several other boats, their sails just hanging there as motionless as we were. But the water looked green and cool, and I longed to be in it. I got up, took the bathing cap out of my bag and put it on, then slipped off the beach robe and dived off. It felt so nice down there, and looked so pretty, with the sunlight filtering down, that I began to swim under water, and stayed down until my breath gave out and I had to come up. I looked back to wave at him, and to my surprise I was quite a distance from the boat, and he was standing there, his hand still on the tiller, swearing at me in a way I wouldn’t have believed him capable of. He ordered me back at once, but I took my time, and finally he pulled me over the side. Then he explained that I had done a very dangerous thing in going so far, as a sailboat can’t be maneuvered like a motorboat, and especially requires that one person always remain aboard it. So if anything had happened, and he had had to go overboard after me, a puff of wind might drift the boat away, and there both of us would be, out there in the Sound, two miles from land. I knew he was right, but didn’t feel at all guilty, so I merely made a fresh remark: “And besides, the water is nice.”
He sulked for a time, then unwound a rope and dropped the sail, then took another rope and tied it to a small wooden grating on the bottom of the boat and dropped the grating overboard, so it trailed in the water. “What’s that?”
“That’s our lifeline, so we don’t get separated from our ship.”
“How would we get separated from our ship?”
“Swimming.”
“Are we going to swim?”
“Didn’t you say the water was nice?”
He lifted his foot, put it square in the middle of my chest and pushed me over backwards. When I came up he was in the water beside me. We both laughed and splashed water at each other, but he made me hold onto the lifeline, and wouldn’t let me swim off at all. I didn’t mind. We both held onto the rope and floated side by side, looking up at the sky. Then he went under me and when he came up he floated facing me, so my head was at his feet, and our hands came together under water. I could feel his toes sticking out behind my head, but my toes stuck out near his ear, as he was a great deal taller than I. I moved my toe in front of his face and wobbled it, and he pretended he was going to bite it. So I pulled it away quick, but that pulled me off balance, and when I got straightened out again we floated for a little while, facing each other. Then he gave my hand a little tug, and my toes went past his head and his face began to come nearer and nearer. We hardly moved but our lips met and then he put his hand up to keep me from floating past him, and we lay there, his face against mine, just looking up at the sky. Then a swell lifted us, and to me it was heavenly, but he whipped away from me as though he had been shot. He looked off to the west and then began going up the rope, hand over hand, and he was hardly in the boat before he motioned to me and pulled me in after him. “Get all that stuff in the basket. Hurry up.”
I still didn’t know what was bothering him, but there seemed to be a great deal of activity in the boats that were near us. A man on the nearest one yelled at Grant. “What you going to do?”
“I’m going to run for it.”
“You can’t make it. I’m riding it out.”
“Suit yourself. I’m going to run.”
I was much mystified, and did as I was told, getting all our things in the basket, and yet I noticed that the water, while it was still green and the sun was out, was running long swells. By this time Grant was laboring to get up the sail. Pretty soon it was up and while there didn’t seem to be any wind, it was flapping in a queer sort of way. He came back and put the tiller over, and suddenly we came about. The sail filled with a jerk, and once more we were running before the wind, except that this time we were lifting along with big swells that went past us, and yet carried us along. As we went past the nearest boat they were dropping the sail and running around highly excited. The man again called to Grant. “You can’t make it, you’ll crack, up sure as hell on that shore.”
“All right, so I crack up.”
“Well, will you please tell me what it is?”
“Squall.”
He was very grim, but except for the water I couldn’t see any signs of a squall. Then, however, all of a sudden the sun wasn’t shining any more and almost at once it turned cold as an icebox. Between the time Grant first ran up the sail and the time it turned cold was five or ten minutes, as well as I can remember. We had been about two miles offshore, and now we had covered about half that distance, headed for a point somewhat beyond the mouth of the cove. He put me at the tiller and went to the foot of the mast. “Hold her just as she is.”
I held her and he kept looking back, and I heard him mutter: “Here it comes.” I looked back and there on the water was a long streak almost completely black, and approaching us at a terrifying speed. When I looked again at Grant he was throwing a rope off a cleat, and the sail came piling down on the boom. He leaped back where I was and began hauling at the rope that held the boom. It came in with the sail dragging in the water, and just as it was in and Grant was wrestling the wet sail into the boat, it hit us. It was like a hurricane, with a splatter of big raindrops mixed with it, and the swells that were racing past us suddenly turned foamy white.
“Put her down!”
He pushed the tiller hard over, and we lurched straight for the cove, the wind and swells carrying us along without any sail at all. The mouth of the cove, I would say, was about a hundred yards away, and we covered the distance in almost no time, scudding rapidly past the grass which was flattened down on the water by the wind and looked white, not green, as indeed everything looked queer, for while it was almost dark a peculiar light seemed to be everywhere. As we entered the cove the first lightning flash came, followed almost at once by a clap of thunder. Not far away I could see our buoy, with the little skiff bouncing up and down on the waves. He took the tiller and pointed for the buoy, yet not quite for it. “Hold her that way till I tell you, then put her up, hard. Have you got it? I want to overshoot the buoy, then hit it upwind.”
“I’ve got it.”
He went to the bow and lay down with his head hanging over. I headed as he said, and we bore down on the buoy at terrifying speed. When we were almost on it, and yet a little to one side, he called, like a shot: “Put her up!”
I jammed the tiller over hard, and we came lurching around on the buoy, with the swells slamming us sidewise. Then we seemed to hesitate for a moment, but that was enough for him. He made fast, and we whipped around so the boat strained on the mooring cable with a jerk that almost threw me overboard. The wind tore at our faces and the little skiff began slamming and bumping alongside. “Come on!”