Like a statue he crouched by the tiller, with his sombre eyes looking
to the sea. That night, when we had rounded Cape Henry in fine weather,
we ran the sloop into a little bay below a headland, and made camp for
the night beside a stream of cold water. Next morning it blew hard from
the north, and in a driving rain we crept down the Carolina coast. One
incident of the day I remember. I took in a reef or two, and adjusted
the sheets, for this was a game I knew and loved. The Indian watched me
closely, and made a sign to me to take the helm. He had guessed that I
knew more than himself about the handling of a boat in wind, and since
we were in an open sea, where his guidance was not needed, he preferred
to trust the thing to me. I liked the trait in him, for I take it to be
a mark of a wise man that he knows what he can do, and is not ashamed
to admit what he cannot.
That evening we had a cold bed; but the storm blew out in the night,
and the next day the sun was as hot as summer, and the wind a point to
the east. Shalah once again was steersman, for we were inside some very
ugly reefs, which I took to be the beginning of the Carolina keys. On
shore forests straggled down to the sea, so that sometimes they almost
had their feet in the surf; but now and then would come an open, grassy
space running far inland.
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