# Brenda's Summer at Rockley/Chapter 9
### IX THE “BALLOON”

Viewed close at hand, the “Balloon” was as flawless as when seen from the water’s edge.
“I’m in constant fear of scratching the paint,” exclaimed Nora, moving about gingerly on the bright deck.
“I never saw anything quite so shiny,” she continued, pointing to the polished brass hand-rail.
“There is n’t a speck of dust anywhere on the woodwork, and the sails look as if they had just come from a laundry. Your skipper must work hard.”
“Oh, the men on a boat like this have so little to do most of the time, that it would be a pity if they could n’t at least, keep things clean.”
“Are n’t you coming below?” called Nora from the cabin door.
“Why, yes,” replied Brenda. “Come on, Julia.”
Descending into the cabin, Brenda, who had been on the “Balloon” before, began to explain its fittings to the others.
“These are transom-seats. You must n’t call them ‘benches,’ or even ‘divans,’ and they are most surprising.”
She lifted one of the green corduroy cushions, and touching a handle, showed that the seats were really great boxes.
​“Dear me! did you ever see such a collection of canned things. Green peas, sardines, mushrooms, caviare! How extravagant those boys are! They ought to live on hard tack and corned beef,” cried Nora, as she poked among the things stowed away under the transom-seats.
“Not much! corned beef, indeed!” exclaimed Philip. “We’d have shown you something very different from that at luncheon to-day. But what do you really think of the ‘Balloon’?” The question was so evidently addressed to Julia, that she very naturally replied to it.
“It’s beautiful. It makes me think of a doll’s house, it’s so complete.” She glanced with approval from the roof, finished in mahogany, to the pale green carpet that harmonized so well with the corduroy coverings of the transom-seats.
Brenda, meanwhile, continued opening various locker doors, and Amy and Nora repeatedly expressed their amazement when they saw how closely things were stowed away. Every bit of space had been cleverly utilized, and all kinds of little conveniences made their appearance in unexpected places.
Back of the transoms were lockers where pillows and bedding were kept, and Philip showed how two good beds could be made up by pulling out the transom, and spreading flat the cushions at the back.
“But you often have a guest, and where in the world do you put him?” asked Nora.
“Oh! we have an air mattress, and we lay it just in the middle of the floor. If our visitor does n’t like that, we ​let him have one of the transom bunks, and Tom or I takes the floor,” answered Philip, with a laugh.
Two brass lamps with white and gold shades swung from the forward bulkhead, and under the lamps on each side of the boat was a chest of drawers.
Brenda, venturing to look into some of the drawers, called Nora’s attention to the neat piles of table linen, while Amy and Julia went into ecstasies over the delicate glass tumblers in the rack above the dresser, on which were painted the Club flag, and Philip’s signal.
“I must say your library is n’t very extensive,” said Nora, turning over the books on the shelves above the transoms.
“Oh, if we had many books, we should n’t have room for other things,” and Philip pointed to the cameras, fleld-glass, yachting-caps, and other odds and ends that took up the most of the shelf-space. “But come, you must see where we keep our charts.”
Philip opened the door of the little lavatory with its set basin and bright faucets, and from one wall removed what looked like a flat board. He explained that this was the dining-table, which when in use had one end placed on a bulkhead at the forward end of the cabin, while the other was supported on a pair of legs.
“But this is what I wanted to show you,” he said, and from the wall behind the table he removed a large portfolio, in which were the large charts which he displayed with genuine pride.
“Where do you get your water?” asked Julia, more interested in the boat’s appointments than in the chart.
​“Oh, there’s a tank in the cock-pit that holds thirty or forty gallons. We get the water from a water-boat that comes around to the yachts every day. It’s the cheapest thing you ever heard of—something like twenty-five cents for fifty gallons.”
“Cheap enough! ” said Nora, “but is n’t that your mother calling, Brenda? I suppose we ought to go on deck.”
“Oh, not until we ’ve seen everything,” cried Julia, and then, with Philip leading, she followed the others to the door in the bulkhead, and there Philip opened the dish-lockers on the port side, and evidently enjoyed their admiration of the pretty white and gold china with the Club and private flags painted in colors, just as on the glass tumblers and water pitcher. Beyond, they caught a glimpse of the oil stove on which the cooking was done. All kinds of cooking utensils, from a frying-pan to an agate coffee-pot, hung about on nails.
“Everything has its place, and we can put our hands on anything in the dark. Jansen makes a fearful row if we don’t put things back just where we found them.”
“The idea!” exclaimed Brenda, “it is n’t his boat.”
“No, but he’s responsible for its appearance. To be perfectly orderly is the only way to get along on a yacht.
“There’s our ice-chest on the starboard side,” continued Philip, changing the subject, “and that iron frame there is the folding-bed for the men, which is let down only at night. There’s really nothing more to see there, except some light sails and extra robes, and lanterns, and other duffle stowed away there in the eyes.”
​“Duffle!” exclaimed Nora, “what a delicious word! Does it just mean ‘things’?”
“Yes,” answered Philip,—“it just means ‘things.’”
“‘Eyes,’” repeated Julia, “I never heard the word used in that sense before.”
“I fairly love such words,” added Brenda; and laughing and exclaiming over what they had seen, the girls were soon on deck again.
There they found Tom Hearst, who had just stepped from the “Sachem’s” boat, making many apologies to Mrs. Barlow for his failure to be on board to welcome them.
“It was something I could n’t help, or you may be sure that I should n’t have been away,” and then he turned to the girls to hear their praises of the boat.
“Here’s Jansen returning, too,” he exclaimed. “Now we can have a sail.”
“There’s no reason, is there,” added Philip, “why we should n’t sail, just a mile or two—more or less?”
Mrs. Barlow, to whom the question seemed to be addressed, hesitated a moment.
“I suppose that you would all think me very cruel if I should refuse.”
“Yes, I am afraid that we might—although of course we’d try not to,” responded Philip, gallantly.
“Oh, mamma, why should n’t we go?” interposed Brenda.
“There are several reasons, my dear. First of all, I must n’t be away too long from cousin Edward and the rest of our guests. Then I am not really very fond of ​sailing myself, and Julia, I am sure, is hardly equal to a rough tossing about. Don’t you think that it will be rough, Philip?”
“As to the last question, Mrs. Barlow, I’m sure that it won’t be rough. The ‘Balloon’ will glide like a bird, and before you know it, we shall have had a delightful sail. If I did n’t feel sure that you and Julia would be perfectly comfortable, I would n’t ask you to go.”
“But the people on the ‘Crusoe,’ what will they think of us?”
“Why, they ’ve gone outside themselves! We ’re more likely to see them by sailing than by lying at anchor.”
“Yes, really, Mrs. Barlow, do let us show you what the ‘Balloon’ can do under sail,” and Tom Hearst spoke with great earnestness.
Mrs. Barlow smiled at the eagerness of the two youths. “Your last argument was really the strongest, Philip; I think myself that we might as well keep our eye to the ‘Crusoe.’ I had forgotten that she had deserted us.”
“Never mind,” said Philip, “we ’ll overtake her, and make her ashamed of herself.”
Thus with sails almost full, the “Balloon” started out, almost like a living creature, as if she felt the spirit of emulation that possessed the breasts of her young owners.
“It does n’t seem possible that it can be hot on shore,” said Nora, as they danced along.
“No, indeed,” and Julia’s voice had a note of pity in it, as she added; “just think of the poor people stifling in narrow streets to-day.”
​“Thank you just the same,” said Brenda, “but I don’t care to think of such disagreeable things. Besides the only poor family that I know much about has been moved to a comfortable country place, and as to the rest of them, I mean the poor people in Boston, why I believe that the most of them are out on the Common, or in the Park, amusing themselves.”
“You ’re more than half right, Brenda,” said Nora, “the Fourth of July is really the poor people’s holiday in town. I ’ve been in town on the Fourth, and they seem to own the whole place.”
“Do you suppose that that is the ‘Crusoe’?” asked Julia, looking eagerly at a yacht still so far ahead of them as to look but a small boat.
“If it is, she ’ll soon hear from us,” said Philip, “for we ’re going to overtake her sure.”
Now for some reason or other the wind seemed to favor the “Balloon,” or perhaps, as the boys modestly suggested, it was because they and their skipper showed superior seamanship. Whatever the cause, after tacking about for some time, to the great edification of Fritz, they met the “Crusoe,” just as she began to turn about.
“That was n’t bad for a small boat,” cried Tom, “now you can have an idea of what we might do, if we really should try to accomplish anything.”
Hats and handkerchiefs were waved on both boats, as they passed, not near enough for actual speaking. On the home stretch, however, the “Crusoe” made the better time, and she rounded the Point with the lighthouse some minutes ahead of the “Balloon.”
​Contrary to her own expectation, Julia had not been uncomfortable on this her first trip on a sail-boat. In the society of her friends, too, she had forgotten half her fears. Nevertheless, had anyone asked her to tell the exact truth, she would have confessed that she would just a little rather be on dry land than on water.
How different it was with Amy! With her veil tied tightly over her hair, with a cape that the boys brought up from the cabin thrown over her shoulders, sitting on the floor of the deck with her back braced against the cabin, she enjoyed every minute. This was something that she had never hoped to enjoy, to have a sail in a real yacht—and she might have added “with real people,” so seldom had it been her good fortune to have the society of young persons of her own age.
There was certainly a dreamy look in Amy’s eyes as she sat there, and Fritz, noticing it, as he passed her once, leaned over and whispered,—
“Writing a poem, Amy?”
At this Amy reddened, for Fritz had come pretty near the truth. If she was not actually composing a poem, she was planning one. She was thinking that there was almost no other object so beautiful as the sea:—
“The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide region round.
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,—
Or like a cradled creature lies.”
While Julia and Amy were rather quiet, the quietest of the young people on the “Balloon,” Nora and Brenda and the two sophomores, or rather juniors, kept up a gay chattering. The scraps of conversation that floated to Mrs. Barlow’s ears often drew an involuntary smile.
“It may have been so in my day,” she said to herself, “but still I do think that the young people of the present day are more frivolous than they need be. They ought to be an improvement over their parents. Surely their advantages are greater. I wonder if Brenda will ever take life ​seriously.” Then, as a peal of laughter came from the quartette in the bow, Mrs. Barlow herself smiled again.
Amy, meanwhile, had turned from poetic thoughts to the more practical. One was the cost of the row-boat that she and Fritz had hired by the hour soon after reaching Marblehead in the early afternoon. They had meant to keep it an hour, or an hour and a half at the most, but now Amy trembled to think what the bill would be, and she wondered if the man from whom they had hired the boat, from their long absence might not think that some accident had befallen them, or that they had made way with the boat. Then there was the question of her mother; what would she think if they failed to meet her! Half-past five was to be the time, and how strange it would seem to Mrs. Redmond to wait out there by the Fort looking vainly for Amy and Fritz. But still, even her reflection on this did not prevent her enjoying the present pleasure. Tom had taken up his mandolin, and Philip his banjo, and the quartette was singing one college chorus after another.
“Said the pussy cat to the owl, oh, what ’ll you take to drink,
Said the pussy cat to the owl, oh, what ’ll you take to drink.
Since you are so very kind, I ’ll take a bottle of ink.”
Brenda had her camera under her arm, and aimed rather extravagantly now at distant objects, a boat at full sail, or a rocky headland, now at some of her friends on the boat. The latter were often in shadow, and there was no doubt that Brenda was wasting a great deal of film. But economy had never been one of Brenda’s strong points.
​“The racers are coming in, the racers are coming in!” cried Fritz, excitedly, from his place on the deck near the stern, where he had been watching every movement of the scattered fleet.
The two leading boats soon appeared, close together, with all their kites drawing beautifully. They made a very close finish, the winner only crossing the line a few seconds ahead of her rival. As soon as they crossed the line, both boats luffed up in the wind, and all light sails were taken in. They then proceeded slowly to their own moorings, while the others came in not many minutes later. The finish line was between two flags moored in the harbor, so that the judges on the piazzas of the Club-house could tell exactly when a boat crossed the line. When the winning-boat crossed the line, a gun from the Club-house sounded, but this was the only noise that marked the end of the race.
“It is n’t quite as exciting as I thought it would be,” said Julia, “I suppose one needs to know a great deal about boats to feel much interest in a sailing race.”
“I tell you what—you ought to have been here this morning for the water sports; they would have been exciting enough for you, I am sure.”
“Oh, tell us about them!” cried Nora. “I ’ve never happened to see them myself.”
“Well, this morning they had a hobby-horse race. The hobby-horses were barrels, with a long stick run through them—a head at one end, a tail at the other, and the men who rode them wore bathing-suits, and the barrels rolled ​over, and they were tumbled in the water. Then there were tub races,—the men, you know, kneel in the tubs, and paddle with their hands; and there was water baseball—but there, you ’ve missed the sports, and the only thing is to make up your minds to be in Marblehead Harbor next Fourth of July, and take in everything.”
“There, that’s the ‘Crusoe’ at her moorings,” exclaimed Fritz, who had been watching a yacht some distance away.
“Then we must bid you good-bye, Philip,” said Mrs. Barlow, rising. “Cousin Edward may feel that we have been away too long.”
“I wish that you could stay longer; but I know that you would call us altogether too selfish if we kept you longer. But we won’t send you home in the launch. You shall go, two by two, in the row-boat, and that will keep some of you here at least a half-hour longer.”
Thus it happened that while Tom rowed Brenda and Nora out to the “Crusoe,” Mrs. Barlow and Julia lingered a little longer on the “ Balloon.” Amy and Fritz took their departure before Tom returned, with many thanks to Philip for the pleasant afternoon.
To Amy’s surprise when they went to pay for the boat, the bill was much less than she had feared.
“But even if it had been more,” said Fritz, “I could have stood it. We ’ve had more than our money’s worth of fun, have n’t we?”
Promptly at half-past five the two young people were ready to meet Mrs. Redmond at the appointed place.
They ate the luncheon which she had brought with a ​good appetite. The cakes and lemonade that had been served them on the “Balloon,” had satisfied their hunger only for the time being. For the picnic repast which Mrs. Redmond had prepared they chose a sheltered nook near Fort Sewall, and they sat there on the heights until after the sunset gun, watching with delight the illumination of the yachts in the harbor, and the fireworks sent up from the shore. Mrs. Redmond listened with great interest to their description of the “Balloon,” and rejoiced that Amy had had this red-letter day.
The Rockley young people wound up the day very delightfully on the “Crusoe.” At Mr. Elston’s urgent invitation, Tom and Philip deserted the “Balloon” for the larger boat.
A few minutes before sunset the girls noticed a sailor standing by the halyards of each yacht within sight. Then when the sunset gun was heard, every flag was pulled down, and the night-hawks went up in their place. Gradually at the bow of each yacht appeared its light, and, as it grew darker, other lights were seen in the rigging. Some of the larger boats had their whole decks outlined with electric lights, and the whole scene was one of great beauty.
When the girls expressed their admiration for the electric lights, Philip regretted that they had n’t an electric plant on the “Balloon.”
“There’s only one little storage battery for the light in the binnacle. But who knows what we may have next year. Anything to please you,” he whispered ​mischeviously to Julia, for he knew that remarks of this kind always teased her a little.
Soon all the cottages facing the harbor, as well as the great club houses, were gleaming with Japanese lanterns, bonfires blazed up here and there, and the sky was almost aflame with rockets and other fireworks.
“It’s too beautiful to last!” cried Julia.
“Well, as we won’t see the end of it, we can imagine that it is going to last. Come, girls, come, we must bid good-night to cousin Edward.”
So, in a short time, the Rockley party, girls, guests, and Mr. and Mrs. Barlow, found themselves driving homeward along a dark road. The Fourth was over.