When Demetrios saw only one person in the fish patrol boat, and
that one a boy, he proceeded to play with me. Making a short tack
out, with me not thirty feet behind, he returned, with his sheet a
little free, to Steamboat Wharf. And there he made short tacks,
and turned and twisted and ducked around, to the great delight of
his sympathetic audience. I was right behind him all the time, and
I dared to do whatever he did, even when he squared away before the
wind and jibed his big sail over--a most dangerous trick with such
a sail in such a wind.
He depended upon the brisk sea breeze and the strong ebb-tide,
which together kicked up a nasty sea, to bring me to grief. But I
was on my mettle, and never in all my life did I sail a boat better
than on that day. I was keyed up to concert pitch, my brain was
working smoothly and quickly, my hands never fumbled once, and it
seemed that I almost divined the thousand little things which a
small-boat sailor must be taking into consideration every second.
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