"Good riddance!" he muttered. "Hope I'll never set eyes again on you or the bunch inside you!"
He bent to his oars with redoubled vigor, and presently a high boulder shut out the camp. In five minutes more he had rounded the point and was pulling north on the heaving Atlantic swell.
The tide was running out strongly. It came swirling round Brimstone in rips and eddies. Percy had never before realized that its force was so great. He made a hasty calculation, and was very unpleasantly surprised to discover that he would have to pull against it for fully ninety minutes ere it turned to run the other way. He began to feel less sure of reaching Head Harbor before daybreak.
"Guess I've bitten off an all-night job," thought he, disconsolately.
But there was no help for it—unless he desired to slink back to the camp he had just abandoned with such thief-like stealth. Percy set his teeth.
"Not while I've got arms to pull with!"
Before buckling to his task he glanced about. On his left rose the familiar shores of Tarpaulin. Miles to his right and almost due west the twin lights on Matinicus Rock twinkled faintly across the sea; while behind him, a little to the west of north, shone the single star of Saddleback, a good four leagues away. The dark-blue summer sky, unmarred by the slightest cloud-fleck, was brilliant with constellations.
It was a night of nights for an astronomer or a poet, but Percy was neither. He had no eyes for the splendor that overhung him. Ten long, watery miles must be traversed before he could beach his pea-pod in the little haven behind Eastern Head. Would his arms stand the strain?
His muscles were harder and stronger than they had been in the middle of June. Likewise, his grit had strengthened with his physique.
"I'll make Head Harbor before light, if it kills me!"