Читать книгу The Sportsman's Club in the Saddle онлайн

4 страница из 40

Walter and Eugene lived in the state of Louisiana, about forty miles from the thriving village of Bellville, in a large stone house which was so completely concealed by the thick shrubbery and trees that surrounded it, that not even its chimneys could be seen from the road. A gravelled carriage-way led from the gate to the dwelling, and then turning abruptly to the right ran down a steep bank to the boat-house. In front of the boat-house a stone jetty extended out into the water; and at the end of it was anchored a buoy, to which, had you been a visitor at the Gaylord mansion during the summer, you would have seen moored a rakish little schooner that held a high place in the estimation of our young friends. And had you seen that same schooner under way, you would have noticed that a Commodore’s broad pennant floated from her mast-head; for Walter Gaylord was commander of the Columbia Yacht Club, and the Banner was his flagship. At the time our story begins, however, the yachting season was over, and the schooner, being too large to be stowed away in the boat-house, had been hauled into a neighboring bayou and hidden among the bushes, where she would be effectually protected from the fury of the storms that visited the coast during the winter. She had sailed many a race during the previous summer, and the pair of gold-mounted field-glasses which occupied a prominent place on the centre-table in the boy’s room, and which they never neglected to show to visitors, proved that she had been victorious in at least one of them. Her young masters thought that her work for the year was over, but it turned out otherwise. She was destined before the winter was ended, to accomplish something that far surpassed all her former exploits, and to sail in waters and visit countries that none of her crew had ever seen before.