noon
I 'll have to give you some lessons in mooring knots , I guess . It wo n't do to slip your cable in the middle of the night . '' The girls were as glad to see Betty 's uncle as he was to greet them , and soon , with plenty of supplies on board , and with the old sea captain at the wheel , which Betty graciously asked him to take , the Gem slipped down the river again . At noon , when they tied up to go ashore in a pleasant grove for lunch , Mr. Marlin demonstrated how to tie so many different kinds of knots that the girls said they never could remember half of them . But most particularly he insisted on all of them learning how to tie a boat properly so it could not slip away . Betty already knew this , and Mollie had a fairly good notion of it , but Grace admitted that , all along , she had been making a certain wrong turn which would cause the knot to slip under strain . They motored down the river again , stopping at a small town to enable Mollie to go ashore and telephone home to learn the condition of little Dodo .