“And you want me to go now?”
“If you really will be so kind. I should propose a short run down the estuary and along the coast towards Exmouth, say for two or three hours. Could you spare so much time?”
“Why, yes, I should enjoy it. I shall be back, say, between six and seven.”
“I’ll have you back at Johnson’s slip at six o’clock. I have a taxi waiting now, and I’ll arrange with Johnson to call another for you as soon as he sees us coming up the estuary.”
“I’ll go,” said Cheyne. “Just a moment until I tell my people and get a coat.”
The day was ideal for the run. Spring was in the air. The brilliant April sun poured down from an almost cloudless sky, against which the sea horizon showed a hard, sharp line of intensest blue. Within the estuary it was calm, but multitudinous white flecks in the distance showed a stiff breeze was blowing out at sea. Cheyne’s spirits rose. It was a glorious sport, this of battling with the foaming, tumbling waves in the open. How he loved their blue-black depth with its suggestion of utter and absolute cleanness, the creamy purity of their seething crests, their steady, irresistible onward movement, the restless dancing and swirling of the wavelets on their flanks! To him it was life to feel the buoyant spring of the craft beneath him, to hear the crash of the bows into the troughs and the smack of the spindrift striking aft. He was glad this Lamson had called. Even if the matter of the invention was a washout, as he more than half expected, he felt he was going to enjoy his afternoon.
Three or four minutes brought them to Johnson’s boat slip on the outskirts of Dartmouth. There Lamson drew the proprietor aside.
“See here,” he directed, “we’re going out for a run. I want you to keep a lookout for us coming back. We shall be in about six. As soon as you see us send for a taxi and have it here when we get ashore. Now, Mr. Cheyne, if you’re ready.”
They climbed down into a small dinghy and Lamson, taking the oars, pulled out towards a fair-sized motor launch which lay at anchor some couple of hundred yards from the shore. She was not a graceful boat, but looked strongly built, showing a high bluff bow, a square stern and lines suggestive of speed.
“A sea boat,” said Cheyne approvingly. “You surely don’t run her by yourself?”