“Because it’s so covered with cormorants and gulls. Then there ought to be an opening somewhere a bit farther—”
“Look out, Mike! Starboard!—hard, or we shall be on that great snag.”
As he spoke Vince seized the sail and swung it across, so as to send the boat upon another tack, and as he did so there was a jerk which nearly threw them overboard, a strange scraping, jarring sensation, and the boat’s head was swung round, and she was borne rapidly along once more by the current which they had experienced before.
For the fierce race suddenly swept about the rock they had grazed, catching the boat and treating it as if it had been a cork, leaving the boys to devote all their energies to steering, to avoid the rocks which studded their course.
“Just the same game over again,” said Vince, “only we’re about a hundred yards nearer in, and the rocks are closer together.”
Their experience of half an hour before was being repeated, but with added perils in the shape of larger rocks, while, to make matters worse, water was rapidly rising in the boat, one of whose planks had been started when they struck.
Vince was seaman enough to know what to do, and, warning his companion to keep a sharp look-out ahead, he took off his jacket, and then dragged the jersey shirt he wore over his head. Kneeling in the bottom of the boat, he proceeded to stuff the worsted garment into a jagged hole, through which the clear water came bubbling up like some spring.
Mike had glanced at the bubbling water once, and shuddered slightly; but he did not speak then, for there was a great rock right in front, towards which the boat was rushing, with the sail well-filled, and having the leeward gunwale low down by the surface.
But Mike did not even wince. The current was racing them along, while the wind was fresher now, and as the boy pressed down the blade of the oar he could feel that the boat was fully under his control—that it was like some great fish of which he was the tail, and that he had only to give one good stroke with the oar blade to send the prow to right or left as he willed.
And, as Vince patted and stuffed the woollen jersey as tightly as he could into the place where the water rushed up, Mike sat fast, till with a rush they glided by the dangerous rock, and the boy strained his eyes to catch the next danger.