"Oh, come along, come along!" she cried ecstatically. "Can we really have a sail?"
Her confidence in Pickle was by this time unbounded. He seemed to her almost as wise and as resourceful as a grown-up person, without all the tiresome prudence that seemed to come with the advance of years. If he took them they would be as safe as if they were with Mr. Trelawny himself, and Pickle's own confidence in his powers was little less.
Good resolutions were cast to the winds. Perhaps Pickle did not even know that this was the case. He had so longed for a breeze which would enable him to sail the fisherman's big boat, and it never occurred to him to regard this desire as a part and parcel of the self-will he had tried to get the better of.
He had given up teasing for leave to go out in the Swan alone. But that was quite different. She was a fast-sailing boat, and perhaps wanted somebody more skilled to manage her properly; but this old tub was as safe as a house, he was perfectly certain of that. Besides, they need not go any distance, but just sail round and round or backwards and forwards in the bay. He knew quite well by this time how to tack and put the boat's head about. He could manage that old tub as well as "Jonah" himself.
"Shall we go and find a coral island?" asked Milly, as they tumbled one over the other in their haste.
"I—I don't quite know," answered Pickle, not wishful to seem backward in the spirit of adventure, but rather doubtful as to the course to take for such a goal. "Perhaps to-day we'd better not go so very far. We can look for a coral island next time."
"Shall we take some provisions with us, in case we're wrecked?" asked Milly with beaming face, as though that would be the crowning delight to the adventure.
"We might perhaps," said Pickle; "one gets jolly hungry out sailing. We often have something to eat when we're out in the Swan."
Milly ran off to the storehouse for supplies, whilst the boys made a rush for the boat. Little puffs of wind were coming up from the west, dimpling the water, which had been as smooth as oil, and making it all ruffled and pretty.
The sun, too, began to be obscured by a light film of cloud, and away over the land great banks of lurid-looking vapor began piling themselves slowly up in the sky; but the children were much too busy to think of looking out for signs like these, nor would they have been much the wiser had they noticed them.