“Thanks. Yes.”
“I say, Mrs. Strachey, do you mind feeling for a cigarette-tin under your feet, along the lee-scuppers?”
After long and obliging search, Aureole produced the pressed-beef, whereof Stuart, resigning himself to circumstances, proceeded heartily to eat.
“What is to be, must be. Not so close to the wind, Peter; that’s better, that’s a jolly useful luff”; the result of a lucky guess on the part of the pilot. “All the same, you’d better resign the helm to Nigger; lot of shallows just about here.”
They were drawing near the spreading waterways of the Sounds. Oliver took Peter’s place. The wind was still exasperatingly light, needing experience to extract from it all the possible pace. Oliver seemed uneasy. Presently he suggested anchoring for lunch.
Peter enquired: “Do we sail over the edge or into the hayfield?” the latter extending low on their right, so that it really seemed as if they could sail straight on and in among the haycocks; while on their other side sky and water closed sharply together, with beyond them a drop over the very edge of the world.
They chose the hayfield, as being more homely and conducive to good appetite; moored the ‘Faustina’ fore and aft; and recalled Aureole from her rapt contemplations of nature: “‘And O! That greener green, that bluer blue!’”
Her brown eyes were very dewy, and her throat was infinitely whiter than Peter’s; she was all sinuous curves and melting harmonies of tint. And very good to look at, Stuart reflected,—if only she wouldn’t describe the scenery!
“By the way, Nigger, are you aware that you’ve been sailing on the wrong jibe?”
“Didn’t want to knock out my wife’s brains.”