Still the west wind held and the little boat stood on till Chatham was on the starboard quarter and no longer visible through the haze. The air still felt warm and heavy; in the northeast, through the haze, dark clouds could be dimly seen gathering. Evans trimmed in his sheets and luffed toward the point of Monomoy. Pollock Rip Slue Lightship was visible, and on that Evans took a careful bearing and wrote it down, together with the time. Monomoy could barely be seen as a faint white line of sand to the westward. No landmark there could be identified, but Evans noted the bearings of as much of it as he could see, then studied the chart. He took a look round at the sky, left the wheel, and glanced at the barometer.
“Glass is falling fast,” he said. “Take the wheel a minute while I put on rubber boots and oilers; then you can do the same.”
He dived below and soon came up dressed in oilskins and sou’wester, took the wheel, and sent Mortimer down to put on his spare set. Suddenly a chill wind struck from the northeast; the sails went over and fetched up on the sheets to starboard.
“What’s up?” called Mortimer from below.
“Wind’s shifted; nothing much yet,” answered Evans as he trimmed over the jib and slacked the main sheet.
Mortimer came on deck. Evans was looking now at the compass and now at the clouds in the northeast, already looking murky and ominous.
“I’m heading for that short cut,” said Evans. “I could still go out round Pollock Rip, but it would waste a lot of time and we’ll be all right in here. I know where we are well enough to hit the channel; if it blows hard the rip will be rather sensational at the shallowest point, but won’t do us any harm. She’s built so strong that even if she did touch the sand in the trough of a wave, it wouldn’t hurt her.”
The wind was now blowing freshly from the northeast and the Petrel was driving along before it at a good speed.
“Isn’t it about time to reef?” asked Mortimer.
“We shan’t need to. That’s the beauty of this rig; you can shorten sail to your heart’s content without reefing.”