"At four or five o'clock in the morning!" Dick grumbled. "Well, I'm glad I'm no use at the helm in the dark, and we may get a few hours' smooth water before we round the Burrow Head. At present I'm wondering why I came."
"There's some water in the bilge, and it's your turn to pump," Whitney remarked.
"If she was half full, I wouldn't pump until this rolling stops," Dick said firmly.
The sea got smoother as they drifted along the coast, and presently ran in faint undulations that gleamed like oil where their surface caught the light. The days, however, were getting short, and soon the long tongue of land across the bay cut low and black against the sunset. The hills to the eastward were gray and dim, a heavy dew began to fall, and a pale half-moon came out. Now and then a puff of wind from the south rippled the glassy water and drove the yacht farther up the bay.
When an inlet began to open out ahead Dick took up the glasses.
"We ought to find water enough across the sands to Gatehouse," he said. "I'd a good deal rather sleep ashore and we'd get a much better meal at the Murray Arms than Whitney can cook."
"We can't get ashore without a breeze," Andrew replied.
"There's somebody going up. I can see a lugsail boat beyond the point."
Andrew took the glasses from him. The light had nearly gone and mist hung about the shore, but a belt of water shone with a pale gleam, against which a distant boat stood out sharply.
"She looks like one of the Annan whammelers; they use a sail with a shorter head in the West, but I can't see what an Annan man would be doing here."