It was the last reef.
Then the mainsail went up, jerking and rattling, looking absurdly small, and quite useless. Also the wrong shape.
"We shan't capsize, anyway," said Crow, inwardly pleased at the small amount of canvas showing.
"No, but we might be pooped."
"Waves aren't big enough, child."
"You wait!" Adrian gave a "hollow" laugh; he noticed it himself. "I've often wondered what a 'hollow laugh' was, in books," he said; "now I've done it myself! Next time I shan't jeer at the miserable chaps who do it when they are hanging by one finger-nail to a crag five thousand feet above a torrent."
"They don't," corrected Crow; "they set their teeth till their jaws look like granite rocks. The person who gives the 'hollow laugh' is the villain who lured them to the crag, and is peeping over just before he goes back to marry the best girl."
Both laughed, not a "hollow one".
"Right-o," said Adrian; "let's sing the 'Marseillaise', Crow, and run up the White Ensign--we've no earthly right, but no one will dispute with us just now. I'll batten the fore-hatch, then 'Westward ho, with a rumbillo--and it's----'" Adrian gave a shout that could be heard right up the valley and made Crow jump, ending with "'my mariners all--O----'" in a fantastic falsetto.
Then he cast off the mooring-buoy.