East and west, so far as eye could reach, the sea pushed a sparkling shoulder against the sheer front of the cliffs. Nowhere else in the whole bay was there a foot's breadth of beach, and there was clearly no outlet landwards even from the slender strand towards which the boat was heading.
A girl with fair hair and luminous gray eyes was steering, and a man of about thirty sat upon the opposite gunwale with the slack sheet in his hand. She looked up at the flapping leech, and then with a whimsical smile into his face.
"You'll have to row in," she said.
"Not I," he protested airily; "we're going to sail."
She laughed a low contented laugh at his perversity.
"Like this?" she enquired, tilting her head at the empty canvas.
"Give the wind time," he replied, with a glance across the bay and a big indrawn breath of complete satisfaction; "we've the whole day before us."
"We haven't the whole channel, though," she said, nodding to starboard, where a black fin of rock cut suddenly in the clear water a little whispering ring of foam.
"Phew!" exclaimed the man, screwing round on the gunwale as the black fin disappeared. "Many like that?"
"Plenty, plenty!" laughed the girl. "Are you going to row?"