Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/65

Rh on the beach this afternoon and see the best boat this side of Cape Hatteras put to sea. These good warm days have baked some of the rheumatism out of me and I’m almost as good  a man as you this morning. We’ll go down to the rocks below the willows there and put  the Josephine into the water. I hope she’ll sail as pretty as she looks.”

It was a great occasion, the launching of the Josephine. Aunt Mattie attended it, and broke a bottle of cologne over the little vessel’s newly painted bow, to make a formal  christening. There was a fresh wind that flecked the water with dancing white caps on  one side of the point, but on the other, inside the harbour, afforded the best sort of breeze  for a maiden trip. The sails were hoisted, the rudder adjusted and the little boat reathlessly lowered off the edge of a rock. She rocked and dipped upon the ripples in a bit of quiet  water, then was pushed out until the wind  caught her new white sails. How they curved to the breeze, how she heeled over just as a real  vessel should and skimmed away as though  she had a sailor at her helm and had set her  course for far and foreign lands! The cord