“Look at the flag,” said Captain John. “It’s blowing well over on the same side as the sail. There’s no fear of a jibe so long as it’s doing that.”
The wind was steady, though light, and on the whole John was glad that there was no more of it on this first voyage to the island with the heavily laden Swallow . Reefing would have been a terrible nuisance, with the boat so full of tents and biscuit boxes and cooking things. Besides, there was so much to see that looked different now that it was seen from the water instead of from the Peak of Darien.
The island was not in the middle of the lake, but much nearer to the eastern shore, on the same side of the lake as Holly Howe and Darien. Along that shore was one little promontory after another. Here and there was a field by the water’s edge, but mostly there were thick woods. Here and there among the trees were houses, but not many of them, and above the trees were the heather-covered slopes of the hills.
As they passed the second cape beyond Darien, Roger, the lookout, reported a ship, and pointed towards the shore. The sail was on that side, so that Roger saw it before the others. In the bay beyond the cape lay a strange-looking dark blue vessel. She was a long, narrow craft with a high raised cabin roof, and a row of glass windows along her side. Her bows were like the bows of an old-time clipper. Her stern was like that of a steamship. She had nothing that could properly be called a mast, though there was a little flagstaff, where a mast might have been, stepped just forward of the glass-windowed cabin. There was an awning over her afterdeck, and under it a big fat man was sitting writing in a deck-chair. The vessel was moored to a large buoy.
“It’s a houseboat,” said John.
“What is a houseboat?” asked Titty.
“It’s a boat used instead of a house. There was one at Falmouth, where people used to live all the year round.”