“Would you mind telling us, then?” demanded Larry.
“Not in the least. We are heading for the shore, on our lee; as for why, there are several reasons: One is that the tide will turn pretty soon, and when it does it will run out of the creek you want me to enter as fast as it does out of the Bay of Fundy. Another is, that the wind is falling and we shall have to take to the oars presently. Another is, that I am persuaded it will be easier rowing across the small current out here than against a tide that rushes out of the creek like a mill tail. There are other and controlling reasons, but I have already given you as many as your intellectual digestion can assimilate. The rest will keep till we’re comfortably ashore. There, that’s the last puff of the wind.”
With that he hauled the boom inboard, let go the halyards and left the rudder-bar.
“It is now after three o’clock,” he said, while the others were unstepping the mast, “and the distance is about three miles or a trifle less. Rowing easily we shall have time after we get there to settle ourselves comfortably before nightfall.”
“I suppose you’re right, of course,” Larry answered, “but it means several more meals on meat and fish alone.”
“Better not cross that bridge till you come to it, Larry. You see we might find manna over there, or some bread-fruit trees newly imported from Tahiti—who knows?”
The others shared Larry’s regret as to the food prospect, but they all recognized Cal’s superior knowledge of conditions as a controlling consideration; so all rowed on in silence.
When at last they reached the neighborhood of the shore, Cal began scrutinizing it closely as if searching for the landing place he had selected in his mind. He was in fact looking for the very narrow and cane-hidden entrance to a land-locked bay that he remembered very well. Presently he turned into it and shot the boat through a channel that one might have passed a dozen times without seeing it. It wound about among the dense growths for a little way and then opened out into a considerable little bay.
Here Cal directed the landing, but instead of arranging to anchor the boat a little way from shore he put on all speed with the oars and ran her hard and fast upon a gently sloping beach.