"Well, we needn’t go home," Adrian remarked as he hauled in the small boat cautiously, "I mean we can go back by train, and leave the yawl----"

"Where?"

"Oh, anywhere."

This was not at all explicit, but Crow understood his meaning, which was that they were not bound to sail back to Bell Bay.  They could make some port, and, putting the _Messenger_ in safety, return by rail.

"We’ll see where we are when the clouds roll by," she answered; "it’s not going on, Addie.  I believe firmly that we shall have a perfect evening."

Adrian, divesting himself of his oilskins, and his boots--"in case the bally thing sank with him," as he explained, made no answer to his sister’s expectations.  But about ten minutes after, when he climbed over the counter, his work well done, he repeated that there was any amount of time, and it would be much better fun to go home some other way.

The storm had either dispersed or "gone to America", they thought.  It had changed the whole aspect of the scene into a desolate waste of tossing grey sea and driving grey cloud, but there was no more lightning, very little rain, and a mere mutter of far-away thunder.

The voyagers found it was just on three o’clock, and Adrian suggested they should steer by compass.  He wanted to know where it was.

"Mollie put it somewhere," answered Crow, with cheerful vagueness most unbecoming in a skipper.

So Adrian unlocked the door of the main cabin, and slid it open.

"Wonderful how whiffy any boat gets when you shut her down, even for half an hour, with everything close," he remarked, putting his head within and sniffing critically, "commend me to an oil-stove on a small yacht for an A1 stench."

Christobel sat still outside, waiting.  Her mind was much easier.  She realized that all conditions were quieter.  She could certainly see farther.  Adrian called out from below that he couldn’t find the compass, so she also dived into the saloon, and hunted exhaustively.  No compass.  They decided that Mollie or Penberthy had taken it ashore.

To let in more light upon the search Adrian unfastened the forehatch, and then lighted the stove, because there was a "wonderful unanimity"--as somebody said, on the question of early tea, Adrian declaring 

 Prev. P 41/404 next