CHAPTER 17

A VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION

      Tim was due home on Sunday, and Will pestered his mother by asking her at frequent intervals when she thought he should call, but as it happened it was Tim who called, evidently as soon as he walked through the door. He had clearly not lost his enthusiasm for the plan; could Roger Wittenbach come too? he now wanted to know. Will readily agreed. Roger, with his infectious laugh, was always good company, and despite his serious talent on the violin, was not too sophisticated for make-believe piracy with wooden muskets. Miles, to whom Will wanted to present the new sword, would be the fourth member of the crew.
      When they met on the morning of the expedition Will found that Tim and Roger had had taken up his suggestion that they dress up with enthusiasm; both had been pirates for past Halloweens, and their outfits put Will’s eye patch and bandana to shame. They were most impressed with his collection of weapons, and Miles, of course, was delighted with his sword, which he brandished with such vigor that he was almost as much a threat to life and limb as if he had been wielding a real one.
      The wind being westerly, they had to beat up the river, making the passage through Hazard Narrows (they had already agreed on the name) in two short tacks, helped by the flooding tide, to find the uncharted waters of the river’s upper tidal reach stretched invitingly before them. It offered numerous opportunities for poking their noses into intriguing nooks and crannies, which they did with lowered sails to maneuver into the tighter spots. Half a mile further upstream they entered a narrower channel, which they named Privateer Straits, with woods coming to the water’s edge on each bank; beyond it the river opened out and divided. To port were rail and road bridges; to starboard lay another stretch of water, that on exploration turned out to be a deep bay with inter-esting formations of granite along the shore, and another creek at its head. They named it Buccaneer Bay, and the point dividing it from the main channel, Cape Deception.
      Dropping sail, they passed under the bridges. Here were a few houses, set back from the river with lawns shaded by huge pine trees sloping to the water, where boats were drawn up, but no one appeared to challenge their passage. Then the river became shallow, obviously navigable only near the top of the tide, and the channel divided around low, grassy islets. Determined to press on as far as the depth would allow, they followed the river around a long, shallow bend with reeds and grasses on each bank, until they came to a secluded pool, with rapids beyond.
      The pool lay at the end of the deep valley from which the river emerged onto the marshy shallows they had just passed; it was screened from the road and the only nearby house by trees. To enter it they crossed a natural weir, an outcropping of granite ledge smoothed by the running water. It was so shallow they had to disembark to ease the Buccaneer over, but the pool was wider and deeper than the channel below.
      “I’ll bet this isn’t tidal,” said Will. “It can’t be, see, even when the tide’s out, the level here can’t fall below the ledge.”
      “Taste it,” said Tim. “It it’s not tidal, it’ll be fresh.”
      Will dipped his fingers into the water and put them to his tongue. There was no trace of salt. “We’ve come as far as we can by boat, my hearties,” he said. “We’ll have to send out a shore party now.”
      They decided that the pool should be called Pirate Haven; they left the Buccaneer here, moored stem and stern, and continued on foot, following the river past pools and rapids until they came to the place where it raced noisily through a narrow chute in upended layers of granite, under a high concrete bridge. There was plenty left to explore. The bridge was obviously a perfect place from which to throw rocks into the water, the river continued in more fast-flowing pools and rapids, and pine woods clothed the steep slope on their left. There was a graveyard up there, Roger said.
      He and Tim and Miles were all for investigating further, but Will bethought himself of the turning tide, and after some argument, they started back. It was almost too late. The water was dropping rapidly, and several times they had to jump overboard and haul the Buccaneer, with bumps and scrapes, over rocks and snags. Once Miles slipped, and had to be hauled, dripping, from under the boat, but there was no time to wring him out. It became a race against time, and Will was fearful for his ship’s bottom, but it would not do to be marooned in the shallows with marshes on each bank, and he gritted his teeth as they ground over yet another obstacle, until they found themselves, thankfully, in deeper water at last, and could catch their breath, and continue at a more leisurely pace.
      Altogether the expedition was declared a great success. Will was relieved to find, when the Buccaneer was on the slipway and he could inspect her bottom, that there was no worse damage than some long scratches in her paint. The only real drawback, they agreed, had been lack of time for the shore party to explore properly.
      That night, as Will lay in bed thinking over the events of the day, seeing the Buccaneer again as a lofty-rigged corvette, and himself and his crew as wild, though basically good-hearted rogues, (their piratical escapades put to the service of the downtrodden, turning them into Robin Hoods of the sea), there came to him the germ of a new and exciting idea.