I used the rudder to make the
boat go. The rudder was the only thing I knew anything about.
I'd held a rudder when I was a little girl, and I knew how to
work it. So I just took hold of the handle of the rudder and
turned it round and round, and that made the boat go ahead, you
know, and--"
"Madam!" exclaimed Captain Bird, and the other elderly
mariners took their pipes from their mouths.
"Yes, that is the way I did it," continued the widow,
briskly. "Big steamships are made to go by a propeller turning
round and round at their back ends, and I made the rudder work in
the same way, and I got along very well, too, until suddenly,
when I was about a quarter of a mile from the shore, a most
terrible and awful storm arose. There must have been a typhoon
or a cyclone out at sea, for the waves came up the bay bigger
than houses, and when they got to the head of the bay they turned
around and tried to get out to sea again. So in this way they
continually met, and made the most awful and roarin' pilin' up of
waves that ever was known.
"My little boat was pitched about as if it had been a feather
in a breeze, and when the front part of it was cleavin' itself
down into the water the hind part was stickin' up until the
rudder whizzed around like a patent churn with no milk in it.
The thunder began to roar and the lightnin' flashed, and three
seagulls, so nearly frightened to death that they began to turn
up the whites of their eyes, flew down and sat on one of the
seats of the boat, forgettin' in that awful moment that man was
their nat'ral enemy.
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