Andrew carefully estimated the difference of level along the bank.
"I think we'll put it here," he decided.
It took them some time to move and bury the heavy stone.
"What about the fairway buoy?" Whitney asked when they had finished.
"We'll let that stay. I want our man to get in and his troubles had better not begin until he's going back. The flood would soon float the vessel off if she grounded going up, but it will be a different matter coming down, when the tide's on the ebb."
They pushed the dinghy off and Whitney pulled away against the stream, which was beginning to run up the channel. The rain had got heavier, but they could hear Marshall's hammer as he drove down the stakes. When they were abreast of him, Whitney stopped rowing. For a few minutes the fisherman stood beside the dinghy while Andrew gave him instructions, and then he vanished into the gloom as Whitney pulled away. Andrew lighted a small lantern and, putting it beside a compass in the bottom of the craft, kept his comrade on his course.
"Harder with your left; the tide's on our port bow," he said: "Steady at that; we're round the point. Pull as even as you can."
The sharper rise and fall and the splashing about the craft showed Whitney that they had reached open water, but he had no other guide. They had left no light on the Rowan and black darkness enveloped the dinghy. The faint glow from the lantern in her bottom made it worse, and all that Whitney could see was Andrew's face and the wet front of his sou'wester as he bent over the compass. The rest of his figure melted into the surrounding gloom. Whitney was tired and wet, and gritty sand scraped the backs of his hands as the oilskin sleeves rubbed across them. There was some risk of Andrew's not finding the yacht, and he must pull hard to reach her before the tide got too strong.
This was very different from yachting in hot weather on the Canadian lakes and Long Island Sound; but it had a fascination he would not have thought possible a few months ago. Andrew and he were playing a bold and somewhat dangerous game, the end of which, he thought, could not be long delayed. As an American, he had no stake on it, except, perhaps, his life, but he understood his comrade's patriotic keenness and meant to see him through. Then he had read enough about the sinking of unarmed merchant ships and the drowning of the crews to fire his blood. He thought this was excuse enough for not observing a strict neutrality; then, as he felt the dinghy lurch across the swell and heard the hoarse murmur of the surf upon the shoals, he knew that the sport was in itself engrossing.
He had caught the big gray trout of the lone Northwest, the bass, and the fighting tarpon, but he was now angling for fiercer prey and he hoped the murderous steel monsters that lurked in the dark water would rise to the bait. They were handled with a relentless cunning that struck him as devilish; and Rankine had hinted that two of the largest and fastest were not far away, lying in wait for a huge new battleship that was coming from the Clyde. Whitney could not think calmly of her lurching under, shattered by a torpedo, with her swarming crew. Besides, his partner had resolved that this should not happen.