Imperfectly Proper

His name really isn't Algie. It wouldn't do to use his real name--he has a very nice wife, you know. So we shall call him Algie, partly as a disguise, and partly because we wish to be offensive. We want to hurt his feelings. It is our earnest desire that he should read this account and writhe painfully. We claim to be as patient and forgiving as the next one, but there are some subjects--and that motor-boat picnic is one of them. When, in addition to being made sea-sick, being scared into acute heart-disease, and being banged about in a locoed launch like a bean in a coal-scuttle, a gentleman is forced to ruin his second-best pair of--but we anticipate.

For two or three weeks prior to the fatal invitation and the fatal day on which he perpetrated the picnic, Algie had been coming down to the office late every morning--so late in fact that his coming amounted to an afternoon call. Furthermore, his face and shirt bore mysterious smudges of train-oil. And though Algie was never what is known as a "swell dresser," he was always a very neat sort of chap in the matter of his personal adornment.

As soon as he arrived he would immediately begin calling up all sorts of mechanics, plumbers, boiler-makers, painters, boat-builders, and electricians. Lengthy conferences would ensue in which frequent references would be made to cylinders and hulls and carburetors and propellers, and the time when certain jobs should have been done, and what a helluva nerve they had to ask any such price. The language was usually very technical. But it was occasionally quite lucid and human, though not of a nature to bear repetition in print which is intended to go into Christian homes.

During the two or three hours in the afternoon when Algie was with us, he would run out every few minutes and come back with a coil of lead pipe, or a dry battery, or a can of gasoline. And then he would slip away at about four o'clock with an intensely preoccupied air.

We all knew where he was going and what he was going to do. He had bought a motor-boat from a friend, and he was trying to put it in such condition that he could go out in it without having to wear a life-belt. Of course, the friend had guaranteed it as the safest, speediest, staunchest, and trimmest little craft that ever got in front of a ferry-boat on the Bay. But one should never buy a motor-boat from a friend. Better buy it from a deadly enemy. Then you may discover a big hole in the bottom of it, or a dynamite bomb stowed away forward with a clock attachment. But that is all. Once you have patched up the hole or thrown the bomb overboard, you are all right. But when you buy a motor-boat from a friend you are never done with trouble.

After Algie had had the Gladiolus--his wife christened it--for about a week, he realized that he had to put a new engine in it. He put the engine in, got the thing started, and headed for the Island. He got there just in time--to save his life, that is. The Gladiolus sank gently to rest on a sand-bar in three feet of water. The liquid composing the Bay is admittedly rather thick, but it managed to ooze into that boat in about four hundred and forty different places. Algie said afterwards that it had looked to him as though the boat were being invaded by an army of angle-worms.

With a marine derrick they enticed the Gladiolus out of the bosom of the sand-bar, and got her back to dry-dock. Then Algie started in to put a new hull around the engine. It amounted to that by the time he got all the repairs made. Then she had to be painted. Also she had to have a new propeller, ditto some chairs, ditto lanterns and a search-light, ditto a set of cushions. But at last the work was done. Algie was tired but happy; and he wanted to share his bliss.

"You simply got to come, old man," he said in a spirit of exuberant hospitality, "won't take no for an answer. Ten sharp, Sunday morning, at Sunnyside--the Missus and I will be right there as you get off the car. We'll run up beyond Port Credit and have lunch by the lakeside. Sharp at ten, mind!"

In a moment of weakness we consented. Nay, more, we looked forward to it. We had visions of ourself leaning back in one of the sumptuous deck-chairs of the Gladiolus, as that beauteous speed-devil ate up the watery miles on old Ontario. We could imagine the shores whizzing by, and the Hamilton boats being left hopelessly behind. So we prayed for fine weather. And when we say we prayed we don't mean that we issued an order to Divine Providence like a parson, but we made a timid and tentative appeal. It was answered. It was one of the finest Sundays we have ever seen. We don't suppose we were really the cause of it, you know, but we felt gratified. When a chap doesn't pray to excess, he naturally is surprised and delighted to get what he asks for. But, alas, we knew not what we did.

When we got off the car at Sunnyside--a popular local beach--there was Algie, sure enough, in white ducks and a stern expression of countenance. Just imagine the face of Admiral Sir David Beatty as he prepared to take the battle-cruisers into action off Jutland, and you will have a faint notion of the concentrated solemnity and sense of responsibility which sat upon Algie's features as he shook our hand in an absent-minded manner and told us to hustle aboard. We did hustle. We don't mind admitting that we were impressed. We felt that here was a seaman who entered upon the grave duties of his position in no frivolous spirit--a true sailor who loved and yet feared the mighty deep.

When we got to the wharf where the gasoline wonder reposed her graceful length, we found Mrs. Algie and two other guests. They were very nice people, very nice indeed. The husband was a clerical-looking chap--his facial make-up suggested a curate in an ineffectual disguise. But his conversation was at times decidedly unclerical--at least, it wasn't the sort of thing one gets from clergymen in their more professional moments. When that big wave came over and sloshed down his neck, he said--but again we anticipate.

Algie and his wife were in nautical costume as befitted the skipper and skipperess. Algie wore a nice pair of white ducks and a white shirt very open at the throat. Mrs. Algie was also in ducks--cut on a different pattern, of course. It was a very fetching little costume. We say "little" advisedly. The skirt had been made remarkably short, or it had grown that way from too long and too intimate association with steam-laundries. The effect, in any case, was to keep it hovering about midway between the nautical and the naughty.

The rest of us were in the ordinary Sunday garb of churchgoers who happen to be going somewhere else. Our clothes were sober and restrained, but natty. They expressed the sombre atmosphere of the Sabbath, with a dash of outing flavor. Personally, we wore that grey suit with the black-line pattern which everyone admired so much. You may have noticed it--two-button coat and cuff-bottom trousers. Really a very pretty thing. We don't mention this from any feeling of childish vanity, but merely because it has a bearing on later developments.

When we saw the Gladiolus we must confess we were disappointed. We had been hearing so much about it, and Algie had spoken with such enthusiasm, that we had formed an idea of a vessel combining the luxury and grace of the Astor family yacht with the rakishness and speed of a torpedo-destroyer. Instead of that gorgeous conception, here was a boat which looked like a very long and narrow packing-case, pointed at one end. It contained an engine that suggested a coffee-mill with a very chunky fly-wheel. Abaft--that, we believe is the technical term--abaft the engine were a couple of cane-chairs.

The Gladiolus, however, was very strong in the matter of decoration. There were stencilled flower-designs in every possible place, and a huge flag drooped over the stern. The cushions presented florid designs of young ladies in sailor-blouses. A large and highly polished search-light glared over the bow like the eye of an enraged Cyclops. There was no acetylene for the light, but it looked well, and it made one feel so much safer.

The party fitted itself into the boat as best it could. It was a very tight fit. Two people seated themselves on the little bench in the stern. They were jammed in so tight that when one was pulled out it made a noise like drawing an obstinate cork. And two sat on the cane-chairs, when they weren't sitting on the bottom of the boat to keep her steady. The skipper had a bench all to himself, so that he could get up and wrestle with the fly-wheel every time the engine paused to think.

When we were all in the boat, she settled down to within three inches of the water--or so it seemed to us personally. We made a hesitating comment on the subject to Algie. He smiled a wintry smile.

"Guess you don't know much about motor-boats, old man," he said in a glacial tone. "You can't have speed unless you have narrow lines and a low free-board. Of course, if you want something built like a grain-barge----"

Hastily we disclaimed any desire for a grain-barge. We stated our entire agreement with him on the subject of low free-boards. Our concurrence was all the more enthusiastic that we didn't know the difference between a low free-board and a loose plank in the fence.

Soothed by our submission, Algie stepped gingerly forward, taking great care not to kick the engine over. He gazed sternly about. We watched anxiously. Algie bent down with dignity, grasped the fly-wheel with both hands, and gave a mighty heave. The engine coughed asthmatically and relapsed into silence. Algie heaved again. The engine cleared its throat--only that and nothing more. Algie smiled a sickly smile, muttered something about the sparker, toyed with a few cocks and levers--that engine seemed to possess more of them than any piece of mechanism we have ever seen--and then heaved that blessed wheel for fifteen minutes without stopping. Nothing doing! Algie was red in the face, his lovely ducks were all smudged with oil, and still the engine preserved the meditative silence of a paralyzed yogi.

It was very trying, very. We all started in to make suggestions, and Algie was so much at a loss that he even tried to carry some of them out, thus losing caste terribly in our eyes. No skipper should ever treat a suggestion with anything but withering contempt. At last he lost his temper and gave the engine a kick. We don't know what he struck, but he certainly struck something. The result was miraculous. The engine started with a roar like an express-train on a bridge, and before we knew we were shooting out into the Lake, just missing a canoe in which a young man sprawled with a double-bladed paddle and beamed at his "ladifren." As we whizzed by, nearly knocking the paddle out of his hand, that young man sat straight up, and while we were within range his conversation was of a character not countenanced by the Lord's Day Alliance.

Thus we started. Of course we didn't keep it up long. After about a hundred yards or so, the Gladiolus settled down to a steady clip of about three miles an hour--when she was going. There were frequent intervals when the engine stopped to get its breath. But we didn't mind. It was a lovely bright day, and there was very little wind. So with our one-lung engine we gayly coughed our way over the glassy waters. We made many jokes, and occasionally burst into song--all except Algie, of course. Algie insisted on preserving the best traditions of British seamanship. On shore he might relax, but while he was at sea and our lives depended on him, he stayed right there on the bridge, and his stern eyes swept the waste of waters and the rock-bound coast lest danger should lurk there. He must have seen a lot of dangers that no one else saw, for he kept zigzagging and tacking about in the most extraordinary manner.