"I was awake, Ashlock. What is it?"
"The wind has shifted, sir," and now he answered confidently enough, "and blows dead in our teeth. We must needs tack if we are to reach the coast by daybreak."
"Well?"
"I cannot do it, sir, without your help. It needs two to tack if you sail with a lug-sail."
And that I found to be true. For the sail being what is called a square-sail with a gaff along the top of it, each time the pinnace went about it was necessary to lower it, and hoist it again on the other side of the mast. The which it fell to me to do, while Ashlock guided the tiller. So that I knew there was good reason for his waking me. However, I had little time for speculation upon the matter one way or another, since we sailed into a mist shortly afterwards, and were on the stretch, both eyes and ears, lest we should be run down by some vessel, or ever we could see it.
I was much exercised, too, what with the stars being hid, and our constant going about, whether Ashlock would be able to keep the boat in a course towards England. I need not, however, have troubled my head upon that score, for it was as though he had some sixth sense which found its occasion upon the sea, and when the day broke and the mist rolled down and massed itself upon the water, we were within five miles of the white cliffs with Dover Castle upon our starboard bow. The mist, I should say, was at that time about chin high, for standing up in the boat we looked across a grey driving floor, above which the smaller vessels only showed their masts.
"Shall I run her into the harbour?" asked Ashlock, and he turned the boat's head towards land.
"No!" I cried vehemently. For now that we were come within sight of England the letter that I carried began to burn in my pocket, and I felt the surest conviction that if we disembarked at Dover, we should be surrounded, catechised, and finally searched, upon the ground of a tell-tale face, which face would assuredly be mine. "No!" I said; "let us take advantage of the mist, and creep along the coast till we find some inlet where we can beach the boat."
This we did, and running now with a freer sail, we came in little more than an hour to a cove some four or five miles to the north-east of Dover, the cliffs breaking off very sharp at each side with a line of thin rocks jutting out at the south corner, and the walls of the cove steep all round and thickly wooded as low as we could see. Towards this cove we pointed, intending to run in there and abandon the boat. But when we were within half a mile of land the sun blazed out in the sky and the fog shredded like so much gauze burnt up in a fire. It was a fortunate thing for us that we had come no nearer to the shore. For there, low down on the beach, and but a yard or two from the water's edge, on a tiny strip of level ground, were four little cottages with the British ensign afloat. Ashlock rapped out an oath and thrust the tiller across to its further limit, meaning to go about and run back out of sight of the cove.
"The sail, sir!" he cried in great excitement, "Oh! damn it, sir, the sail!"