“Why, it’s all sand there now, and we’re under the lee of it,” said Davies, with an enthusiastic sweep of his hand over the sea on our left or port hand. “That’s our hunting ground.”
“What are we going to do?” I inquired.
“Pick up Sticker’s Gat,” was the reply. “It ought to be near Buoy K.”
A red buoy with a huge K on it soon came into view. Davies peered over to port.
“Just pull up the centreboard, will you?” he remarked abstractedly, adding, “and hand me up the glasses as you are down there.”
“Never mind the glasses. I’ve got it now; come to the main-sheet,” was the next remark.
He put down the helm and headed the yacht straight for the troubled and discoloured expanse which covered the submerged sands. A “sleeping whale”, with a light surf splashing on it, was right in our path.
“Stand by the lead, will you?” said Davies, politely. “I’ll manage the sheets, it’s a dead beat in. Ready about!”
The wind was in our teeth now, and for a crowded half-hour we wormed ourselves forward by ever-shortening tacks into the sinuous recesses of a channel which threaded the shallows westward. I knelt in a tangle of line, and, under the hazy impression that something very critical was going on, plied the lead furiously, bumping and splashing myself, and shouting out the depths, which lessened steadily, with a great sense of the importance of my function. Davies never seemed to listen, but tacked on imperturbably, juggling with the tiller, the sheets, and the chart, in a way that made one giddy to look at. For all our zeal we seemed to be making very slow progress.
“It’s no use, tide’s too strong; we must chance it,” he said at last.