Close to Wind

Sailing with the boat pointing as nearly as possible against the wind is called sailing close to the wind; when you have turned your bow to the right or left so that the wind strikes both boat and sail at right angles you are sailing with the wind abeam; as you let out your sheet so that the boom makes a larger angle with an imaginary line running from the mast to the middle of the stern you are sailing off the wind; and, when your sail stands at right angles to this same line, you are sailing free or before the wind.

Before the Wind

Sailing free, or before the wind, is the extreme opposite of sailing close hauled or on the wind, and the wind is blowing behind your back instead of approaching the sail from the direction of the mast. If you are sailing free on the port tack, with the boom at right angles to the mast on the starboard side, and you should steer your boat sufficiently to starboard, the wind would strike the sail at its outer edge or leech and throw the sail and boom violently over to the port side of the mast. This is called jibing and is a very dangerous thing; it should be carefully guarded against whenever sailing before the wind.

Reefing

If you find that the wind is too strong for your boat, and that you are carrying too much sail, you can let her come up into the wind and take in one or two reefs. This is done by letting out both the throat and peak halliards enough to give sufficient slack of sail, then by hauling the sail out toward the end of the boom, and afterward by rolling the sail up and tying the points under and around it, but not around the boom. Always use a square or reef knot in tying your reef points. In case of a squall or a strong puff of wind, remember that you can always ease the pressure on your sail by turning the bow into the wind, and if for any reason you wish to shorten suddenly you can drop your peak by loosening the peak halliards.

Ready About

Before "going about," or turning your bow so that the wind will strike the other side of the sail at its mast end, the man {184} at the helm should always give warning by singing out the words, "ready about."

"Going about" is just the opposite of jibbing.

Right of Way

When two boats approach each other in opposite directions, close hauled, the boat on the starboard tack has the right of way and should continue her course. The responsibility of avoiding a collision rests with the boat sailing on the port tack. But a boat running before the wind must always give way to a boat close hauled.

When sailing through high waves, always try as far as possible to head into them directly at right angles. Always steer as steadily as possible. If you are careful to keep the boat on her course and do not let your mind wander, only a slight motion of the tiller from side to side will be necessary.

Flying the Flag

While the "fly" or "pennant" is carried at the top of the mast, the flag is carried at the peak or upper corner of the sail at the end of the gaff. The salute consists of tipping or slightly lowering the flag and raising it again into position.

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Notes

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Notes

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CHAPTER IV

TRACKS, TRAILING AND SIGNALING

_By Ernest Thompson Seton, Chief Scout_

"I wish I could go West and join the Indians so that I should have no lessons to learn," said an unhappy small boy who could discover no atom of sense or purpose in any one of the three R's.

"You never made a greater mistake," said the scribe. "For the young Indians have many hard lessons from their earliest day--hard lessons and hard punishments. With them the dread penalty of failure is 'go hungry till you win,' and no harder task have they than their reading lesson. Not twenty-six characters are to be learned in this exercise, but one thousand; not clear straight print are they, but dim, washed-out, crooked traces; not in-doors on comfortable chairs, with a patient teacher always near, but out in the forest, often alone and in every kind of weather, they slowly decipher their letters and read sentences of the oldest writing on earth--a style so old that the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the cylinders of Nippur, and the drawings of the cave men are as things of to-day in comparison--the one universal script--the tracks in the dust, mud, or snow.

"These are the inscriptions that every hunter must learn to read infallibly, and be they strong or faint, straight or crooked, simple or overwritten with many a puzzling, diverse phrase, he must decipher and follow them swiftly, unerringly if there is to be a successful ending to the hunt which provides his daily food.

"This is the reading lesson of the young Indians, and it is a style that will never become out of date. The naturalist also must acquire some measure of proficiency in the ancient art. Its usefulness is unending to the student of wild life; without it he would know little of the people of the wood."

There Are Still Many Wild Animals

It is a remarkable fact that there are always more wild animals about than any but the expert has an idea of. For {188} example, there are, within twenty miles of New York City, fully fifty different kinds--not counting birds, reptiles, or fishes--one quarter of which at least are abundant. Or more particularly within the limits of Greater New York there are at least a dozen species of wild beasts, half of which are quite common.

"Then how is it that we never see any?" is the first question of the incredulous. The answer is: Long ago the beasts learned the dire lesson--man is our worst enemy; shun him at any price. And the simplest way to do this is to come out only at night. Man is a daytime creature; he is blind in the soft half-light that most beasts prefer.

While many animals have always limited their activity to the hours of twilight and gloom, there are not a few that moved about in daytime, but have given up that portion of their working day in order to avoid the arch enemy.

Thus they can flourish under our noses and eat at our tables, without our knowledge or consent. They come and go at will, and the world knows nothing of them; their presence might long go unsuspected but for one thing, well known to the hunter, the trapper, and the naturalist: wherever the wild four-foot goes, it leaves behind a record of its visit, its name, the direction whence it came, the time, the thing it did or tried to do, with the time and direction of departure. These it puts down in the ancient script. Each of these dotted lines, called the trail, is a wonderful, unfinished record of the creature's life during the time it made the same, and it needs only the patient work of the naturalist to decipher that record and from it learn much about the animal that made it, without that animal ever having been seen.

Savages are more skilful at it than civilized folk, because tracking is their serious life-long pursuit and they do not injure their eyes with books. Intelligence is important here as elsewhere, yet it is a remarkable fact that the lowest race of mankind, the Australian blacks, are reputed to be by far the best trackers; not only are their eyes and attention developed and disciplined, but they have retained much of the scent power that civilized man has lost, and can follow a fresh track, partly at least by smell.

It is hard to over-value the powers of the clever tracker. To him the trail of each animal is not a mere series of similar footprints; it is an accurate account of the creature's life, habit, changing whims, and emotions during the portion of life whose record is in view. These are indeed autobiographical chapters, {190} and differ from other autobiographies in this--they cannot tell a lie. We may get wrong information from them, but it is our fault if we do; we misread the doc.u.ment that cannot falsify.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: Animal tracks; Deer, Sheep, Mink, Cottontail, Hawk, Owl, Meadow Mouse.]

{190 continued}

When to Learn Tracking

The ideal time for tracking, and almost the only time for most folk, is when the ground is white. After the first snow the student walks forth and begins at once to realize the wonders of the trail. A score of creatures of whose existence, maybe, he did not know, are now revealed about him, and the reading of their autographs becomes easy.

It is when the snow is on the ground, indeed, that we take our four-foot census of the woods. How often we learn with surprise from the telltale white that a fox was around our hen house last night, a mink is living even now under the wood pile, and a deer--yes! there is no mistaking its sharp-pointed un-sheep-like footprint--has wandered into our woods from the farther wilds.

Never lose the chance of the first snow if you wish to become a trailer. Nevertheless, remember that the first morning after a night's snow fall is not so good as the second. Most creatures "lie up" during the storm; the snow hides the tracks of those that do go forth; and some actually go into a "cold sleep" for a day or two after a heavy downfall. But a calm, mild night following a storm is sure to offer abundant and ideal opportunity for beginning the study of the trail.

How to Learn

Here are some of the important facts to keep in view, when you set forth to master the rudiments:

_First_.--No two animals leave the same trail; not only each kind but each individual, and each individual at each stage of its life, leaves a trail as distinctive as the creature's appearance, and it is obvious that in that they differ among themselves just as we do, because the young know their mothers, the mothers know their young, and the old ones know their mates, when scent is clearly out of the question.