helping navigate and keep the log, marking down when we passed each spar and buoy and nun and lighthouse. In a few hours we passed the Hen and Chickens, and a little while afterward we sighted the lightship, and then we turned to the northward and entered Buzzards Bay. It got smoother right away, because we got under shelter of the islands that shut the bay off from the ocean, and then we picked our course up the channel and rounded the lighthouse just this side of New Bedford, and wiggled through the opening in a stone breakwater, and cast anchor in a harbor full of yachts. There must have been close to a hundred of them—all kinds. It was Padanaram, where the New Bedford Yacht Club has a clubhouse and where most of its yachts lay.

About half an hour later in came the Porpoise and dropped her anchor not far from a whopping big schooner yacht. She sort of settled down with a grunt of satisfaction that she had come up with us again. Well, we hadn’t gained anything.

Catty and I went in for a swim. It was Catty’s idea and it turned out he wanted to go in so we could swim around out of earshot and talk things over.

“The trouble with this crowd,” says he, “is that they don’t plan anything. They just run, and trust to luck to throw the Porpoise off our track. No sense in that. The enemy is planning. They’re keeping watch all the time, and they’re ready. The only way we can duck them is to plan better than they do.”

“All right,” says I, “go ahead and plan.”

“I’m going to,” says he. “I’ve been studying the chart of these waters, and it ought to be easy to give them the slip. Over across there are a lot of islands, and harbors and channels to fiddle around in. Off at the end is Penikese Island where the Leper colony is, and next is Cuttyhunk, and the chart shows a little land-locked basin that you get into through a sort of canal. I bet if we could manage to duck in there, nobody could see us from outside. Then there’s Robinson’s Hole and Wood’s Hole, and farther up the bay are inlets and things. Then, once we get through one of the Holes, we’re in Vineyard Sound, and across that is Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. I’d say this was a part of the coast made on purpose to hide in.”

“Suits me,” says I, “let’s hide.”

“Yes,” says he, “but the Porpoise won’t blind and be it while we hide. If we could get them to count up to a couple of thousand while we find a place to hide, it would be all right.”

 Prev. P 20/125 next