"It wouldn't have been a city of refuge if the avenger of blood could come after us in another boat and take us away," added Puck. "I'm afraid it won't be a city of refuge any longer now. I wish we hadn't gone sailing, but just gone home. Then nobody would have known anything."
"Were you out on the water in the storm?" asked Esther, with a little shiver. "O Pickle, you should not have been so disobedient. You know Mr. Earle and Mr. Trelawny would not let you sail the boat alone."
"Not the Swan," said Pickle quickly, "but nobody had said anything about that old tub."
Esther looked rather grave, and a quick wave of color swept over Pickle's face.
"I wanted to do it," he said in rather a low voice; "perhaps that was why it seemed all right."
"You might have been drowned," said Esther in a voice of awe; "Mr. Earle said so himself."
"I thought so once," said the boy; "I was frightened then."
"Tell me about it," said Esther with a little shiver. She sat down on the side of Puck's bed, and he got fast hold of her hand. He was more subdued than Pickle, though Esther could see that even the bold elder boy had received a considerable shock to his nerves. His eyes were bright, and he was excited and not quite himself.
"We had always wanted so much to sail the boat," said he in response to Esther, "but there had never been any wind. And to-day, when it began just to blow a little, it seemed just the very thing. So we got in and went off, and it was delicious. We did it beautifully, and it was all pretty and sunny on the sea, and we went along finely. But by and by the waves got bigger, and Bertie began to get sick, and some of them wanted to get home again. So we tried to tack her round as Mr. Earle does, but she wouldn't go against the wind a bit, and the waves splashed in and wet us. And then we tried to row, but we only got farther and farther away from land, and the sea got rougher and rougher. And Bertie was sick and frightened, and everybody wanted to get home, and we couldn't."
"O Pickle, how dreadful! What did you do?"