There was a certain suggestiveness in the girl's tone which Jimmy noticed, though he did not think her father did, and he wished it had been light enough to see Anthea Merril's face; but unfortunately it was not. She appeared to disregard the question, and glanced in Valentine's direction.
"Couldn't we have the big spinnaker up?" she asked.
Valentine hesitated a little. The breeze was moderately fresh and the Sorata traveling fast enough, while it is not a very easy thing to steer a craft running under the great three-cornered sail, which is apt to swing over in case of a blunder at the tiller.
"You could hold her steady before the wind?" he asked.
"If I don't, I will make my father buy you a new mast," said Anthea.
Valentine made a little gesture which was expressive of resignation. It was, he had discovered, singularly hard to say no to Anthea Merril; but it seemed to him that the new mast might be needed if she ventured too far now. He and Jimmy between them got the great sail up and its boom run out, though it cost them an effort; and then Jimmy glanced aft with more than a trace of uneasiness at the white figure at the helm. The Sorata had now on each side of her a swelling mass of canvas that dwarfed the narrow strip of hull, and she swung each of them high in turn as she rolled viciously. Still, as far as Jimmy could see, the girl stood very composedly at the tiller. Then, as the great mainboom went up high above the sea, Valentine signed to him.
"You had better get out and steady it," he said. "It wouldn't need much to bring that boom over."
Jimmy crawled out on the slippery spar, and sat astride near the end of it, while Valentine made his way along the one beneath the spinnaker. Their weight checked the lifting of the sails in some degree, but for the first few minutes it seemed to Jimmy that they and their companions were hazarding a good deal. If the girl at the helm let the tiller swing a hand's-breadth too much when the Sorata, piling the froth about her, rushed up a dim slope of water, either mainsail or spinnaker would swing over, and the men on the booms would have no opportunity for attempting to obviate the unpleasantness that would certainly succeed it. In all probability they would be flung off headlong into the sea. Still, the sail did not come over, for the Sorata drove along straight before the wind, and once more Jimmy paid silent homage to the girl at the tiller.
He could see her only dimly, a blurred white shape against the dusky sea, but he could imagine the little glow in her eyes and the way in which her lips were pressed together. He had seen her look that way when she sat beside him in the cockpit one wild morning as the Sorata plunged over the great Pacific combers, and it seemed to him that she was one who would face difficulties and perils of any kind as unwaveringly. Indeed, he was angry with himself for having fancied there was any hazard at all in leaving her to steer the Sorata under spinnaker, for he felt that Anthea Merril must necessarily be capable of carrying out anything she had undertaken.
So he swung contentedly with the lifting boom, now hove high above the dark water, now dropped down until his feet were almost in the streaming froth, while shadowy islets clothed with pines sprang out of the sea ahead, grew into solid blurs of blackness, and flitted by, until at last Austerly said that his daughter must go below. Then Valentine and Jimmy came in along the booms, stowed the spinnaker with some difficulty, and dropped the topsail too, for the dim mainland shore was black ahead when the rest left the deck to them.