The lads embarked their cask, fitted, for the first time, the wooden key to the wooden lock of their door, carried Archie high and dry through the surf, and deposited him, laughing, beside his sister, and pulled stoutly round the point in the teeth of a strong and chilling wind. Archie was in one of his merry moods this day, which made his sister the less unwilling to leave him with the Murdochs at the farm till evening, which she was about to do. He laughed when the wind drove the spray in their faces, and mimicked the creaking of the oars in their sockets as they strained against the force of a rough sea. He made some resistance to being landed when they reached the cove below the farm, but took his sister’s hand and ascended the cliff with her while repeating that he wanted to go on the sea again.
The Murdochs were good-natured people, when nothing happened to make them otherwise, and they declared themselves delighted to see Archie, and promised to take all possible care of him. Ella reminded them that the only care necessary was to give him his dinner, and see that he did not stray beyond the farm.
When the rowers got fairly out to sea, they were dismayed to find that the sloop had disappeared during the night. There was every reason to fear that they were a day too late for the market, and that the last vessel to be seen that season was now sailing away from them.
“If it be,” said Ronald, “we must take a voyage to the Clyde islands, or perhaps to Greenock; and I should not much mind that: Ella could do without us for a few days.”
“We must prevent such a waste of time,” said Ella; “so pull away southwards, and let us see if we cannot overtake the sloop. She cannot have gone far with this wind. The first of you that wearies, give me the oar.”
The boys continued their rowing in silence till Ella desired Ronald to make for a boat some way off and hail it. He did so.
“Holla! Which way lies the Jean Campbell?”
“Gone northwards before the wind.”
Northwards! Then she could not have completed her cargo yet; “but would she return through the same Sounds?” they asked the people in the other boat.
“Hardly likely,” was the answer; “but there is another coming up, the Mary of Port Glasgow. If ye clear the point, ye’ll see her with all her sails set, unless she has stopped to take in kelp or herrings.”