him into the water and he awoke with a snarl and
sat up.

"For goodness sake! aren't we in yet?" he demanded, crossly. "What you
been doing for the last hour Clint Webb? We're no nearer the inlet now
than we were then, I swear!"

That was a peculiarity about Paul. He was addicted to laying the faults
of even inanimate objects to the charge of other people; and as for
himself personally, he was never in the wrong! Now he felt that he must
have somebody on whom to vent his vexation--and hunger; I was used to
being that scapegoat, and it was seldom that I paid much attention to
his snarling. On this particular occasion, I said, calmly:

"Now, Paul, you know very well that I hold no position with the
Meteorological Bureau, and therefore you shouldn't lay the sins of the
weather to me."

"Huh! ain't you smart?" he grunted.

You see, Paul had awakened in rather a quarrelsome frame of mind
while--well, I was hungry, too (it was long past our dinner hour) and so
felt in a tantalizing mood. If we had not been at just these odds on
this lovely September evening, the incidents which follow might never
have occurred. Out of this foolish beginning of a quarrel came a chain
of circumstances which entirely changed the current of my life. Had I
held my tongue I would have been saved much sorrow and peril, and many,
many regrets.

"I'm smart--I admit it," said I, cooly; "but I can't govern the wind.
We'll get in by bedtime."

"And nothing to eat aboard," growled Paul.

"There's the fish _you_ caught," said I, chuckling.

Paul had had abominable luck all day, the only thing he landed being
what we Bolderhead boys called a "grunter"--a frog-mouthed fish of most
unpleasant aspect and of absolutely no use as food. All it did when he
shook it off his hook in disgust was to swell up like a toy balloon and
emit an objective grunt whenever it was poked. Funny, but these
"grunters" always reminded me of Paul.

Now, at my suggestion, my cousin broke into another tirade of abuse of
the Wavecrest, and what he termed my carelessness. I didn't care much
what he said about me, and I suppose there was some reason for his
criticism; I should not have gone outside the inlet without more than
just a bite of luncheon in the cuddy. But when he referred to my bonnie
sloop as "an old tub" and said it wasn't rigged right and that I didn't
know how to sail her, then--well, I leave it to you if it wouldn't have
made you huffy? You know how it is you