“Can’t we row ashore? It is only a few miles, is it?”
“We can try, but I am afraid we are in for a regular tearer. We get them sometimes on this coast after a spell of calm weather.”
“Please give me an oar,” she said. “I am used to rowing—of a sort.”
So he let down the sail, and they began to row. For ten minutes or so they struggled against the ever-rising gale. Then Morris called to her to ship oars.
“It is no use exhausting ourselves, Miss Fregelius,” he said, “for now the tide is on the ebb, and dead against us, as well as the wind.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Morris glanced back to where a mile behind them the sea was beginning to foam ominously over the Sunk Rocks, here and there throwing up isolated jets of spray, like those caused by the blowing of a whale.
“I am going to try to clear them,” he said, “and then run before it. Perhaps we might make the Far Lightship five and twenty miles away. Help me to pull up the sail. So, that’s enough; she can’t stand too much. Now hold the sheet, and if I bid you, let go that instant. I’ll steer.”
A few seconds later the boat’s head had come round, and she was rushing through the water at great speed, parallel with the line of the Sunk Rocks, but being momentarily driven nearer to them. The girl, Stella Fregelius, stared at the farthest point of foam which marked the end of the reef.
“You must hold her up if you want to clear it,” she said quietly.