CHAPTER 18

FRANK TAKES THE DINGHY

      Before he had time to think further he had untied the painter, dropped the dinghy into the water, and climbed aboard. He picked up an oar, pushed off a rock so that the dinghy drifted a few yards from the shore, and dropped the oar into the notch in the transom. How should he hold it? he wondered. Should the blade be flat, or up and down? He supposed up and down, then it would work like the tail of a fish. He dipped the blade into the water, and pushed the oar back and forth. It resisted the movement; the stern of the dinghy swung sideways with each push, but it did not move forward, then the oar jumped out of the notch.
      He put it back, and tried again, with the same result. Something was not right; when the old man had done it, the oar had obviously moved easily through the water. It would move more easily if the blade was flat, although he did not see how it would push the dinghy along. Anyhow, he might as well try. The results were no more encouraging. The dinghy did not move, and the oar kept jumping out of the notch.
      He took it in both hands and awkwardly paddled the dinghy away from the bridge, toward which it had drifted, then sat with it resting in the notch, and tried to puzzle it out. The old man must have held the blade flat, he decided; the oar was just too hard to move the other way. But how did he make it push the dinghy along? He remembered that the old man’s elbow had led his wrist, sort of dragging his wrist along, which then flicked over at the end of each stroke. He practiced the movement in the air a few times, without the oar. Yes, it had looked something like that.
      He replaced the oar in the notch, blade flat, under the surface, then moved his arm sideways, elbow first, flicked his wrist, and repeated the movement the other way; the dinghy immediately moved forward, but before he could complete a third stroke, the oar jumped out of the notch.
      He had obviously gotten the right movement; all he had to do was get the hang of keeping the oar in the notch. He tried again, and yet again; he could see how it worked now; the blade was not really flat; the angle of his arm and wrist made it work like the blade of a propeller, only going back and forth, instead of rotating. Absorbed in mastering the new and interesting skill, he forgot the dragging minutes, which now telescoped treacherously, until he had lost all track of the time.