"I really beg your pardon," he stammered confusedly, "but I took you for
a friend of mine!"
Harris thought it was lucky for him the man had not mistaken him for a
relation, or he would probably have been drowned outright.
Sailing is a thing that wants knowledge and practice too - though, as a
boy, I did not think so. I had an idea it came natural to a body, like
rounders and touch. I knew another boy who held this view likewise, and
so, one windy day, we thought we would try the sport. We were stopping
down at Yarmouth, and we decided we would go for a trip up the Yare. We
hired a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge, and started off. "It's
rather a rough day," said the man to us, as we put off: "better take in a
reef and luff sharp when you get round the bend."
We said we would make a point of it, and left him with a cheery "Good-
morning," wondering to ourselves how you "luffed," and where we were to
get a "reef" from, and what we were to do with it when we had got it.
We rowed until we were out of sight of the town, and then, with a wide
stretch of water in front of us, and the wind blowing a perfect hurricane
across it, we felt that the time had come to commence operations.
Hector - I think that was his name - went on pulling while I unrolled the
sail. It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished it at length, and
then came the question, which was the top end?
By a sort of natural instinct, we, of course, eventually decided that the
bottom was the top, and set to work to fix it upside-down.
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