Chapter III: Part 3

Now I knew there was something about a sailboat called a sheet, but I naturally assumed it was the sail. I leave it to any disinterested person if a sail, being white and more or less square in shape, doesn't look more like a sheet than a mere rope does. So, as I wasn't near the sail, but was merely holding on to my rope, I started to tell him I wasn't touching his blamed old sheet. But the words were never spoken.

The boat tried to shy out from under me and came very nearly succeeding. At the same time, she buckjumped and stood right up on one edge, like a demented gravy dish. At the same moment, also, a considerable portion of the Atlantic Ocean came aboard and lit in my lap, and something struck me alongside the head with frightful force; and something else scraped me off the place where I was sitting and hurled me headlong.

When I came to, the man who owned the boat was scrambling round, stepping on me and my clothes, and grabbing at loose ends, and swearing; but as soon as he had a moment to spare from these other duties he called me a derned idiot! I was his guest, mind you, and he used that language toward me.

"You derned idiot!" he said. "Didn't you see she was about to jibe?"

I told him in a dignified manner that I certainly did not; that had I known she was about to jibe I would most certainly have jobe with her; that personally I preferred any amount of jibbing, however painful, to being drowned first and then beaten to death. I demanded to know why he had assaulted me upon the head and what he did it with.

It developed, though, that he had not struck me at all. The boom swung round and hit me. This is a heavy section of lumber, and I think it is called a boom from the hollow, ringing sound it makes when dashing out the brains of amateur sailors. In my judgment these booms are dangerous and their presence should not be permitted aboard a sailing craft--or, at least, they should be towed a safe distance aft.

But I digress. Referring to the devastating and angry elements that encompassed us, the owner of the boat said there was now a nice, fresh breeze blowing, and that he hated to miss the fun; but if I preferred to he would run back in and hug the shore. Hug it! I was ready to kiss it! What I wanted to do was to take that dear shore in both arms and press my throbbing cheeks against her mossy breast, and swear that nothing should ever again come between me and the solid part of the continent of North America.

So, by a sheer miracle escaping death on the way, we returned, and I betook myself off of that craft and headed straight for the clubhouse. I wish to take advantage of this opportunity, however, to deny the report subsequently circulated by certain malicious persons to the effect that I was scared. Any passing agitation I may have betrayed was due to my relief at finding that the cyclone, despite its fury, had not swept the North Atlantic Coast bare. I also wish to deny the story that I was pale. I have one of those complexions that come and go. Anybody who knows me will tell you that.

However, I have decided to give up sailboating; and, to a person of my shape and conservative tendencies, this leaves the field of outdoor sport considerably circumscribed. I am too peaceful for baseball and not warlike enough for football. I had thought some of taking up tennis, but have been deterred by the fact that so many young women excel at tennis. I could stand being licked by another man, but the idea of facing one of those sinewy young-lady champions whose stalwart face looks out at you from the sporting page is repellent to me.

I can understand why so very few of these ultra-athletic college girls marry off early. A man instinctively is drawn to the clinging-vine type of female. If there is any sturdy oak round the place he wants to be it. But what I cannot understand is how these brawny young persons can be the granddaughters and the great granddaughters of those fragile creatures, with wasp waists and tiny feet, who lived back in the Early Victorian period and suffered from megrims and vapors. I'll venture that none of this generation ever had a vapor in her life; and as for megrims, she wouldn't know one if she met it in the big road. She may be muscle-bound and throw a splint sometimes, or get the Charley horse; but megrims are not for her--believe me!

Oh, I've seen them often--the adorable yet brawny creatures, leaping six feet into the air and smacking a defenseless tennis ball with such vigor that it started right off in the general direction of Sioux Falls at the rate of upwards of ninety miles an hour, and coming down flat-footed without having jostled so much as a hairpin out of place. You may worship them, all right enough, but it is safer to do so at long distance.

Suppose you were hooked up for life to a lady champion and you happened to displease her? She'd spank you! Think of being laid face downward firmly across a sinewy knee and beaten forty-love with one of those hard catgut rackets! The very suggestion is intolerable to a believer in the supremacy of the formerly sterner sex.

So I have decided not to take up tennis; but the doctor says I need exercise, and I think I will go in for golf, which is a young man's vice and an old man's penance. I have already taken the preliminary steps. I have joined a country club; I have also chosen my caddie. He is a deaf-and-dumb caddie, who has never been known to laugh at anything.

That is why I chose him.

End of Project Gutenberg's Cobb's Bill-of-Fare, by Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb