I’m as hollow as a drum.  Give me the tiller, you’ve been at it for an age.  The stove’s all ready--by the way, I told Mother Jeep to give us about a dozen hard-boiled eggs, I knew I could eat six!  I say, Crow, isn’t it the very limit to come out down here?  Who’d have imagined such dazzling luck.  When you come to think of it, losing the dinghy was about the best thing that ever happened to us----"

And so on ... Adrian glowing with optimism which was his normal condition--when not in the depths of despondency.

Christobel was supremely happy too.  The sun shone. Addie was very content, and Mrs. Romilly would receive a wire.  She made tea, and sang under her breath.

It was nearly five o’clock when they crossed the humming bar, between the lovely slopes of Peverell and Tamerton. The wind dropped suddenly, because the huge bluff called the Heggadon formed a complete screen, but the tide still acted a friendly part, for, though it was turning outside, the change was not completed inside, as harbours and all inlets of the sea are half an hour to an hour later than the main tide outside.

The Messenger swept in smoothly on the top of the flood, under the most perfect conditions possible.  The beautiful estuary looked like an inland sea, with here and there the long back of a sandbank showing above the ripple.

"We’ll do it again, Crow, won’t we?" said Adrian, beaming satisfaction, "why, it’s nothing."

"No," allowed the skipper, eyeing the wet sails thoughtfully.

"Look at the time, my good girl--look!  Five o’clock. And when did we leave Bell Bay?"

Christobel thought it was about 11.30.

"So it was--well, what’s that?  Five hours and a half--and not plain sailing, mind you, either--but a rattling thunderstorm, and a lost dinghy!  I call it great!"

Crow admitted that it was great.

"But I’m afraid we shan’t get home till rather late," she added.

Adrian briefly reviewed the train time-table, which was decidedly limited in that part of the world.

"We shall want something extra to eat in the town," he said, "but mind you, one can do an awful lot in the eating line in ten minutes.  I know, 

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