When next he waked the afternoon was well advanced. The air felt rather close and muggy, and so hazy was it that the sun shone dimly, and the land, only three or four miles away, was scarcely visible.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“There’s Chatham nearly abeam,” said Evans. “The barometer’s falling; I think we may get a squall.”
“Your boat will stand it, I trust?”
“She’ll stand it, all right,” said Evans with a laugh. “She’ll stand anything that blows. The only practical question is whether to take the short cut between Bearse Shoal and Monomoy. It saves two or three miles, and if it’s going to be rotten weather it’ll be more comfortable for old men like us to get into some sheltered water before dark.”
“What is there against the short cut?”
“Well, if it should get thick with rain it would be a little hard to see where we were, and there are shoals on both sides; also it’s all so shoal there that a heavy squall from the northeast would kick up an infernal rip with the tide running the way it will be when we get there. But then, a rip can’t hurt us unless it’s bad enough to let her touch bottom in the trough, and it would take a first-class hurricane to do that.”
“Well, all I ask is that you avoid a serious shipwreck, for I’ve responsibilities ahead that I really ought not to sidestep.”
“You can trust the Petrel to get you through,” said Evans.
“Not to mention her skipper,” answered Mortimer.