Allan suspected that the wind would wane at sunset, and in the course of an hour turned the bow of the Arabella to the northwest, to which course the wind was entirely favorable. Indeed, the wind freshened, and shortly after five o’clock they were within half a mile of the western shore, which now was in shadow.
Allan then turned north again while they debated where they should anchor.
“Don’t anchor yet!” pleaded McConnell.
“If we are to make a ‘farthest north’ to-night,” said Allan, who had read “Nansen” with enthusiasm, “and do our dallying to-morrow, I think we should keep going for half an hour yet.”
“Suppose we try for that cove up beyond Rodlongs,” suggested Owen. “There is a spring there, and a good place to anchor.”
“I remember that,” said Allan; “the Canoe Club landed there one night. But I think it will take an hour yet.”
Owen thought they could do it in thirty or forty minutes, at the rate they were then going; and they would have done so had not the wind fallen slightly. As it was, the Arabella reached the cove in three-quarters of an hour, just as the twilight began to deepen.
“The Arabella was making good time.”
The boys lifted the centre-board, and pulled the bow of the boat into the mouth of a little stream that trickled from the near-by hill, and that was reënforced by the spring, to which McConnell presently started with their tin bucket.