534 
FOREST AND STREAM 
December, 1921 
neither jest nor idle boast on my part, 
much as it may have .sounded. With 
our departure delayed from one cause or 
other and the ice making thicker each 
day the idea of transporting our outfit 
across Long Island had gradually taken 
shape in my brain. What was there to 
stop us? I argued. What was the sharpie 
but an oversized skiff, flat and narrow, 
but thirty feet long, and weighing, per- 
haps, a couple of tons with all our im- 
pedimenta? Once we had crossed to the 
Long Island shore I was morally certain 
someone could be found to haul us over 
the land. 
W E got an early start from New Ro- 
chelle one morning with the mer- 
cury registering five degrees and sleet fly- 
ing spitefully at our backs. I doubt if we 
would have tackled it had the wind been 
anywhere but at our backs. It meant 
a straight run into Hempstead Harbor 
with very little handling of icy sheets — 
something of a consideration when the 
thermometer stands at five. Slipping 
across the Sound without incident, we 
dropped anchor off the town of Roslyn 
in the early afternoon. It was up to 
me now to locate a man who would pack 
our rig over the island. 
I hate to think of the weary miles we 
covered that day. It still amuses me to 
recall the incredulity of the Long Island 
native as he listened to our preposterous 
request. The aborigines could, I vow, 
scarcely have viewed our proposition 
with a greater degree of astonishment. 
At last we struck Soles — “Bill” Soles, by 
request. Bill was quite human, and pos- 
sessed, moreover, four sturdy “team.” 
Bill said he would take the job. He 
was on hand per schedule in the cold 
gray dawn next morning, and picking 
out a strip of hard beach the wagon was 
backed in nearly to the wheel tops, our 
gunning skiff hauled across decks and 
the sharpie floated over the trucks with- 
out the slightest trouble. A 
crack of the whip; a derisive 
jeer from the town youth as- 
sembled, and we were off on the 
second leg of our cruise o’er 
land and sea. 
That journey from Roslyn to 
Freeport — for it was for Free- 
port we set our course — was 
something of a triumphal prog- 
ress under Bill’s capable guid- 
ance. Bill Soles, it transpired, 
had many friends along the line 
of march. At one weather- 
beaten farm house where we 
stopped to water the horses Bill 
-.asually mentioned cider and we 
purchased a large supply. Later, Mr. 
Soles pulled up without comment and 
pointed to a tiny cabin some distance 
back from the road. “Gal in there I 
know middlin’ well ; she kin cook t’ beat 
th’ band. Come on. Dinner won’t cost 
you a five-cent piece — ” and we went. 
He was right, it didn’t. Recollections 
of “Minny’s” dinner still linger ; but we 
paid for it just the same. I don’t doubt 
they divided on Bill’s back trip. Bill 
was a canny man. 
Sunset was drawing near, a sunset 
which only made itself known by a grad- 
ual failing of the sombre light and a 
marked increase in the cold. Freeport 
seemed but a chimera of Bill’s imagi- 
nation, despite his constant assurances 
that it lay “just through that next neck 
o’ pines.” It was only the smell of the 
marsh at length that persuaded me Bill 
hadn’t lied from the first, and wasn’t cart- 
ing us back to Hempstead Bay by some 
circuitous route of his own. At last we 
made out a ribbon of water. “The Sea ! 
The Sea!” I hailed from aloft. “That 
ain’t no sea,” Bill scoffed. That there is 
Freeport Creek.” 
We spent that night snugged away in 
the lea of the marsh. The wind, which 
had risen to half a gale, shrilled eerily 
through our rigging to the incessant ac- 
companiment of whipping halyards and 
the creak— creak of our restless rudder. 
Inside the Noah’s cabin, however, we 
made light of wind and weather. It was 
warm and cheerful enough, with the ap- 
petising odor of frying bacon and coffee 
filling the air. After all, this was 
prime duck-shooting weather. We could 
scarcely have asked for better. Visions 
of black-duck, and mallard, and high- 
flying widgeon, taking the place of the 
sugar plums of nursery lore, danced 
through my head that night as I lay be- 
tween sleeping and waking and listened 
to the rush of the wind. We at last ar- 
rived at the borderland — at the very 
gates, indeed, of Duckdom. Within sight 
of our cabin lights — in reach, perhaps, 
of our good ten bores, ducks nestled close 
in those teeming marshes — ducks that 
were worth a fellow’s trouble — ducks, 
by Gad ! that would pay expenses ! But 
one thing disturbed my drowsy reflec- 
tions: we had failed to provide for ship- 
Mallards 
ping crates for those ducks we were go- 
ing to kill. 
Up next morning with the proverbial 
lark, we took instant stock of the 
weather. To our disappointment the 
wind had hauled due north, and while 
not blowing as it had on the preceding 
day, I was not in the least deceived as 
to its ultimate intention. “Pete !” I said, 
“It’s going to blow. It’s going to blow 
like — well, like anything you care to 
think of so long as it’s something bad.” 
Pete took a squint to windward and 
supplied the proper word. 
\Y7 E had figured on a run to Amity- 
” ville that first day, where we 
meant to purchase some overlooked 
stores and add to our supply of coal. 
Plaving in view the long portage, we had 
sailed light of this important commodity. 
At Amityville we could fill our lockers, 
and from there strike across to Cedar 
Island where we hoped to kill our ducks. 
We made a hasty breakfast; tucked in 
two reefs in anticipation of the worst 
that old norther could do, and poled out 
to the mouth of the creek. Ice barred 
our way in some places, but it was not of 
a serious thickness, and we managed by 
the combined use of pole and oar to 
break our way through in time. Al- 
ready the clouds were scudding across 
the blue above us and a heavy swell 
making in from the broader water. Pete, 
a youth wise in his generation, was for 
temporizing awhile with the wind before 
thrusting ourselves in its path. We 
should have done so, but we didn’t. We 
ran up our two little shortened sails and 
slipped jauntily out to face it. 
A dead whack to windward — eight or 
ten miles of it, lay before us, and I knew 
in my heart we need look for no favors 
from those swiftly moving clouds. And 
yet — so fickle is the romping old North 
Wind — so given to wiles and whims, we 
sailed out on a sea of comparative calm; 
there was just enough weight in the fre- 
quent flaws to keep us on the alert. Even 
my suspicions were somewhat allayed. 
We were making good weather of it, 
after all, and the Noah proved a stout old 
ship. Sand bars we met and cleared 
with good fortune ; bearing off for some, 
shooting up for others, with the hum of 
the breeze in our halyards and the waves 
slapping noisely along the sharpie’s sides. 
And then — “Z — Z — Z— Zing !” It caught 
us a point or two off the wind and wal- 
loped the poor old Noah down to her 
cabin ports. Luckily we’d had the fore- 
thought to close them, or the contents 
of the cabin would have been ruined then 
and there. The seas broke 
s under our upturned bilge, 
sending torrents of water 
half mast high and drench- . 
ing us through our oil- 
skins. We were smoth- 
__ ered, seemingly, for all 
time in that first vicious 
flaw. Sinister rattlings and crashes from 
the sharpie’s internals warned us that, 
despite much careful stowing, various 
articles had slipped their moorings and 
were rolling about at random; we were 
not in a position, however, to investi- 
gate the wreck. Feather white, the 
squalls were tumbling down on us — 
burying us in an avalanche of icy water. 
How we pulled the Noah out of it I 
don’t know. At last, with a wicked final 
puff, the wind lulled down in a measure. 
We were able to beat our numbed hands 
back to life and shake out that portion 
of the Great South Bay which had 
lodged about our persons. This was the 
moment when, holding discretion far 
above valour, we should have put about 
