“We’ll hold on a minute,” she said, “and make sure. There’s no use running all that way down to leeward until we’re certain. We’d only have to beat up again.”
“It is a tent,” said Frank. “I can see now. There are two tents.”
Priscilla caught his excitement She knelt on the floor boards, crooked her elbow over the tiller, leaned over the side of the boat and stared under the sail at the island.
“That’s him,” she said. “Now, Cousin Frank, we’ll have to jibe again to get down there. Do you think you can be a bit nippier in getting over the centreboard than you were last time. It’s blowing harder, and it won’t do to upset. You very nearly had us over before.”
Frank was too excited to notice that she now put the whole blame of the sudden violence of the last jibe on him. Thinking over the matter afterwards, he remembered that she had apologised at the time for her own bad steering. Now she wanted to hold his awkwardness responsible for what might have been a disaster.
“All right,” he said, “All right I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
“I won’t risk it,” said Priscilla. “You’d mean to do all right, but you wouldn’t when the time came. That ankle of yours, you know. After all, it’s just as easy to run her up into the wind and stay her.”
“There’s a man at the door of one of the tents looking at us through a pair of glasses,” said Frank.
“Let him,” said Priscilla.
She was hauling in the main sheet as the boat swept up into the wind.