“What are you saying? Who’s Miss M‘Carthy?” asked Francie, with a disappointing sparkle of enjoyment in her eyes.
“She’s the daughter of a George’s Street tobacconist that your friend Mr. Hawkins was so sweet about a couple of months ago that they packed him off here to be out of harm’s way. Look out, Dysart, I’m going about now,” he continued without giving Francie time to reply. “Lee-helm!”
“Oh, I’m sick of you and your old ‘lee-helm’!” cried Francie, as she grovelled again in the cockpit to avoid the swing of the boom. “Why can’t you go straight like Captain Cursiter’s steamer, instead of bothering backwards and forwards, side-ways, like this? And you always do it just when I want to ask you something.”
This complaint, which was mainly addressed to Mr. Lambert’s canvas yachting shoes, received no attention. When Francie came to the surface she found that the yacht was at a more uncomfortable angle than ever, and with some difficulty she established herself on the narrow strip of deck, outside the coaming, with her feet hanging into the cockpit.
“Now, Mr. Lambert,” she began at once, “you’d better tell me Miss M‘Carthy’s address, and all about her, and perhaps if you’re good I’ll ask you to meet her too.”
As she spoke, a smart squall struck the yacht, and Lambert luffed her hard up to meet it. A wave with a ragged white edge flopped over her bows, wetting Christopher again, and came washing aft along the deck behind the coaming.
“Look out aft there!” he shouted. “She’s putting her nose into it! I tell you that top-sail’s burying her, Lambert.”
Lambert made no answer to either Francie or Christopher. He had as much as he could do to hold the yacht, which was snatching at the tiller like a horse at its bit, and ripping her way deep through the waves in a manner too vigorous to be pleasant. It was about seven o’clock, and though the sun was still some height above the dark jagged wall of the mountains, the clouds had risen in a tawny fleece across his path, and it was evident that he would be seen no more that day. The lake had turned to indigo. The beds of reeds near the shore were pallid by contrast as they stooped under the wind; the waves that raced towards the yacht had each an angry foam-crest, having, after the manner of lake waves, lashed themselves into a high state of indignation on very short notice, and hissed and effervesced like soda-water all along the lee-gunwale of the flying yacht. A few seagulls that were trying to fight their way back down to the sea, looked like fluttering scraps of torn white paper against the angry bronze of the clouds, and the pine trees on the point, under the lee of which they were scudding, were tossing like the black plumes of a hearse.
Lambert put the yacht about, and headed back across the lake.
“We did pretty well on that tack, Dysart,” he shouted. “We ought to get outside Screeb Point with the next one, and then we’ll get the wind a point fairer, and make better weather of it the rest of the way home.”