"It is only because of this," she answered, indicating the child.
"I know that, but I do not thank you any the less." He put Anne-Hilarion over the side and scrambled on board himself. François followed his example, and began to push off.
"Take the tiller, Monsieur," he said, "and I will hoist the sail. Au revoir, la femme!"
The wind carried away his wife's farewell. Rocking violently at first on the swell, the boat gradually steadied and gathered way as the lug-sail shot up, and at last, close-hauled, she was making her way out of the bay, and La Vireville and his charge were really leaving their native shores.
"Enfin!" exclaimed the former, and as François was now at liberty to steer, he relinquished the tiller and took Anne-Hilarion in his arms.
Once out of the lee of the land the full force of the wind was apparent. The Marie-François—in such manner did the fishing-boat combine the names of her owner and his wife—lay over to it; in the gloom the water rushed white past the gunwale (there was no coaming), and La Vireville had some ado to keep himself and the child in place on the weather side.
"You see!" shouted François, and he eased her a point or two.
He was laying the usual course for Jersey, to the northward of Granville, by the Passage de la Déroute. But the wind was strongly against them, and on their lee, to the left, as they both knew, lay the miles and miles of shoals and broken, half-submerged rocks and islets of the Iles Chausey and the Minquiers, so treacherous a network of reefs that for thirty miles out from the French coast in their direction there was no water more than ten fathoms deep, and few channels that were safe. It was true that this was not the direction which the voyagers wished to take, but it was, unfortunately, the direction of the steadily-increasing wind.
From time to time La Vireville struck a light, looked at the compass and reported, and François would take measures accordingly. On the other tack, however, the Marie-François did not sail so well. After some couple of hours spent in these unprofitable manœuvres, during which they had only progressed a very few miles, La Vireville permitted himself to remark on this fact, and to say resignedly that he supposed they must make up their minds between being driven on to the rocks of Chausey or revisiting the Norman mainland. For himself he preferred Chausey.
"I told you that she made much leeway," replied the owner of the Marie-François rather sulkily. "If she were a bigger boat we might change our course and ride out under the Iles Chausey till morning, when the wind will probably abate, but she is too small for that. Or, if the tide were making, we could find our way inside to the natural harbour that there is by the Grande Ile (always supposing there were no vessels of the Blues doing the same). But the ebb has already begun, and if we got in there we could not get out again, for the channels would be dry."