“He’ll sail her in, but if you’re not through in forty-eight hours, I’ll fire you and scrap this machine!” Then he touched Aynsley’s arm. “Leave him to it, and give your orders to Hartley.”
They went up on deck, and Aynsley saw his father light a cigar and then savagely throw it away; and when he came back after speaking to the skipper Clay was standing in the deckhouse with a small bottle and a wineglass in his hand. He looked at his son angrily, and Aynsley, recognizing the bottle, hastily went out.
A few minutes later the yacht swung off her course to the east, and they set the foresail and two jibs. At midnight, when it was blowing hard, the engines stopped, and they hoisted the reefed mainsail. Aynsley was surprised to see Clay on deck, but he did not speak to him, for Clay’s manner indicated that he was in a dangerous mood.
When day broke the schooner was sailing fast, close-hauled, with her lee channels in the water and the white seas breaking over her weather bow. Aynsley found his father sitting at the foot of the mainmast, which was the only dry spot. It looked as if he had been on deck since midnight.
“She’s getting along fast, but Hartley thinks she’s carrying more sail than is prudent,” Aynsley remarked. “There’s a big strain on the weather rigging, and I imagine it would be safer to heave her to and shorten sail.”
“Let her go,” said Clay. “The fellow who designed her specified the best Oregon sticks for masts, and I remember paying high for them. Now they’ve got to stand up to it.”
“Very well,” Aynsley acquiesced; but when the breeze still freshened he stayed on deck, watching the growing list of the vessel as, hard pressed by the canvas and half buried in foam, she plunged furiously through the breaking seas.
During the morning the wind veered to the east, breaking the schooner off her course, so that they were forced to make long tacks, and it was late when a great range of forest-shrouded hills rose up ahead. Rocky points and small islands broke the line of beach, and as they closed with it Aynsley climbed the fore rigging with his glasses. There was a gap in the belt of surf three or four miles off, which he knew was the spot he sought, and coming down, he had a consultation with the skipper before he explained the situation to Clay.
“So far as we can calculate from the tables, the tide had been ebbing for about two hours,” he said. “That means the stream will be setting strongly out of the inlet, and we’ll have the wind against us going in. I know the place pretty well, because I once sheltered there, but Hartley wasn’t with me then, and after looking at the chart he’s a bit nervous about trying it on the ebb.”
“How long would you have to wait for water on the flood?”