had been strangely silent during the ride back to the cottage, as if she I were concentrating on something.
As soon as I shut the door behind us, she jumped me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The list grew. The piles and stocks of supplies grew consequently. These items were transported semi- surreptitiously down to the Hatton's slip in, Wellfleet Harbor where, incidentally, there had been no sign whatsoever of Penelope. My beard was half grown and emerging iron gray. Dark glasses and a big floppy canvas hat helped further to keep my face hidden. With Jack helping out, I managed to secure the cargo aboard the Ella Hatton. It was two weeks past Labor Day but the harbor was still full. The hard-core sailors didn't take their boats out until late October. A few diehards have been known to leave their boats in the water all winter, going on the assumption it won't freeze solid. If it does, the boat has had it, crushed between packs of moving ice like a grape in a wine press.
When we were finished, every cubby, hatch, and shelf in the Hatton's interior was filled with canned hams, fresh corn and melons, cases of soda water and beer, wedges of cheese, cigars and pipe tobacco, and everything else needed for a couple of weeks afloat in comfort and style.
Ella Hatton's antique appearance comes mostly from her rig. The wide, low sails and the graff rig, the bowsprit and the jibboom all bespeak an earlier age: the turn-of-the-century fishing and clamming industry on the Cape where these boats originated. Also the wheel, tiny portholes, wide rudder, and her soft, blocky lines have the plain, rugged look of a commercial craft rather than the sleek, faintly fragile appearance of the racing yachts.
She draws just two feet of water with her centerboard up, which means that she can be beached. Also, because of her flat bottom and wide shape, she sits perfectly upright when stranded on a tidal flat. This is important because in Cape Cod Bay stranding is a common, often times intentional thing, and a boat that sits level is far more comfortable than one that lies on her side.
Jack and I finished stowing the gear after I had placed the two twenty-five-pound blocks of ice into the icebox beneath the cockpit seat. Then we closed the teak shutters, drew back the main hatch, and locked up tight with a big brass padlock. In the morning I would top up the fuel and water tanks and cast off.
'It seems to me we put about two tons of stuff aboard,' said Jack as he stood up on the dock looking down at the catboat, 'but she doesn't seem any lower in the water or anything.'
'She's as wide as a pie pan. Maybe that's why.'
We went back to The Breakers for dinner.
A driftwood fire was crackling away in the grate. I unrolled the charts on the low coffee table and we poured over them, roughly outlining my mission. Mary was to be settled in at the domicile in Concord with Joe, who was coming for an extended visit. He loved his Beacon Hill flat, but a sojourn in the countryside-particularly in fall-was an annual custom he looked forward to. From my point of view, considering certain recent events and possible future complications, I was glad an armed officer of the law would be staying with Mary.
Tony had finished his summer job in New Hampshire and was up in Acadia National Park camping with friends. Jack would return to Concord with Mary in the morning; I didn't want him or any of my family at The Breakers without me.
I told them I would head west along the inside of the Cape first, nosing my way into the small harbors of Barnstable and Sandwich. From there I would either head north to Plymouth, or south through the Cape Cod Canal down into Buzzards Bay and the oceanside, although I doubted this. Whatever was happening-if anything-was happening in the Bay, or to the north.
Next morning after the breakfast dishes were cleaned and put away, we shut The Breakers up tight, hiding all the valuables and locking it. Then Jack and I dragged the twelve-foot Swampscott dory up from the beach and put it on the roof rack of his Land Cruiser. We stowed the tiny British outboard engine in the back and headed for the harbor. I would tow the fiberglass dory behind the Hatton. It would enable me to come ashore from any anchorage and provide easy dockside access in any harbor I chose to enter. Besides these conveniences, it was unsinkable (the Hatton, with its lead ballast, was not) and would make a good lifeboat should the Hatton swamp in a heavy sea or dash herself to pieces on a ledge.
When everything was in order I kissed Mary good-bye and reminded her that I would call once a day without fail. She clung a bit too hard, too long. She was still worried.
Jack was to follow her to Concord and spend a few days there, tentatively to arrive in Plymouth on the third day to reconnoiter with me and the Hatton.
The two cars made tight turns in the harbor parking lot, then glided up to the mainroad, turned, and vanished.
I made ready and cast off.
When I was clear of the harbor, I cut the engine to a crawl and I began to watch my 'telltales.' These are strips of fuzzy orange yarn tied to my stays. They blow in the wind and indicate its direction. I wanted to be directly into the wind when I raised the main. I winched it up and the boom and gaff flapped spastically back and forth. The jib followed. The sails flip-flapped stupidly until I turned the Hatton downwind a bit, until the telltales were parallel to the leading edge of the sails as I hauled them tight. Then, a change came over Ella Hatton. The sails caught. The boat heeled slightly, and there was a sense of force, pressure, and function. I cut the diesel. In a few seconds our speed picked up because the slow-turning prop had feathered itself, thus decreasing the resistance of the boat in the water. I trimmed the sails still more and adjusted the Hatton's course.
When a sailboat is properly trimmed in a fresh breeze-when the wind direction, hull, and sails are all in perfect symphony-she trembles. It is a stiffening tremble, as in a woman reaching orgasm-a vibrancy of energy and force that tells the experienced helmsman that the boat is performing optimally.
With the engine cut, there was only the sound of rushing water and the creaking of the sheets and blocks. I sat holding the wheel and kept Ella Hatton heading south. Both sheets were fastened in jam cleats. These are cleats that hold the lines by means of toothed cam gears, and can be released immediately in a strong puff of wind. Jam cleats have made solo sailing easier and safer. The Hatton bounced and dipped along; I watched the green- blue water slide past, sending up never-ending streams of bubbles and tiny whirlpools of silver air and water. Farther back the brine swirled white-gray in endless filigrees of foam. There was the hiss and chuckle of moving water. The hiss I find a particularly pleasant sound, the sound of effervescence, like soda water or champagne.
I slipped the loop of heavy line over the longspoke of the wheel and dove into the hatchway long enough to turn on the radio. The dial was on the VHF channel l62.5-the weather frequency. Amidst the buzzing, squelches, and droning came the steady voice of the Weather Bureau. '… winds west, northwest five to eight knots, freshening to ten to twelve knots by late afternoon… barometer thirty point two and steady… seas one to three and rising… forecast fair and windy tonight with partial cloud cover, visibility nine miles… tomorrow windy and cool, with squalls likely in the evening…'
I listened on for the tide report, then ran forward again and switched it off. For the nonce I had nothing to worry about. The Hatton was booming along nicely, and I should have no trouble reaching Dennis by five. I cracked open a beer and kept my eyes on the buoys. Smalley Bar slid past my starboard side. I looked up at Little Beach Hill on Great Island where a pirate tavern had stood in the old days. Had Walter Kincaid fulfilled his dream by discovering a horde of lost treasure? If so did he still have it, or did something grievous befall him? Whether he was alive or dead, Wallace Kinchloe was dead for sure. Someone else was then using his identity. That person appeared to be James Schilling. I kept puzzling over this as I passed Jeremy Point. Lieutenant's Bar was ahead on my port bow. When I reached it, I would be at the foot of Billingsgate Island, where it had all started. A few minutes later I was there. There was no island to be seen though, because it was high tide. Billingsgate lay about three feet under, which meant that I could wade over it. But I stayed clear; the Hatton's centerboard was down, which meant she was drawing five and a half feet. I had read somewhere that Billingsgate wasn't always a sunken island.
There was a village on it up until around 1845 when the inhabitants noticed it was sinking. The tides were creeping higher and higher and gales caused waves to sweep entirely over it-something that had never before happened. So they left. They took their houses with them too-just jacked them up, put them on rollers, and lugged them over to the mainland. And that was that.
