Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular War

by G. A. Henty

After steering for a couple of hours, Terence relinquished the oar to his companion.

"You must get accustomed to it, as well as I," he said, "for we must take it in turns, at night."

By twelve o'clock they were abreast of a town; which was, they had no doubt, San Sebastian. They were now some four miles from the Spanish coast. They were travelling at about the same rate as that at which they had started, but the wind came off the high land, and sometimes in such strong puffs that they had to loosen the sheet. The fisherman had shown them how to shorten sail by tying down the reef points and shifting the tack and, in the afternoon, the squalls came so heavily that they thought it best to lower the sail and reef it. Towards nightfall the wind had risen so much that they made for the land, and when darkness came on threw out the little grapnel the boat carried, a hundred yards or so from the shore, at a point where no village was visible. Here they were sheltered from the wind and, spreading out the nets to form a bed, they laid themselves down in the bottom of the boat, pulling the sail partly over them.

"This is jolly enough," Ryan said. "It is certainly pleasanter to lie here and look at the stars than to be shut up in that hiding place of Jules's."

"It is a great nuisance having to stop, though," Terence replied. "It is a loss of some forty miles."

"I don't mind how long this lasts," Ryan said cheerfully. "I could go on for a month at this work, providing the provisions would hold out."

"I don't much like the look of the weather, Dicky. There were clouds on the top of some of the hills and, though we can manage the boat well enough in such weather as we have had today, it will be a different thing altogether if bad weather sets in. I should not mind if I could talk Spanish as well as I can Portuguese. Then we could land fearlessly, if the weather was too bad to hold on. But you see, the Spanish hate the Portuguese as much as they do the French; and would, as likely as not, hand us over at once at the nearest French post."

They slept fairly and, at daybreak, got up the grapnel and hoisted the sail again. Inshore they scarcely felt the wind but, as soon as they made out a couple of miles from the land, they felt that it was blowing hard.

"We won't go any farther out. Dick, lay the boat's head to the west again. I will hold the sheet while you steer, and then I can let the sail fly, if a stronger gust than usual strikes us. Sit well over this side."