Ten minutes brought us aboard the little yacht and ten minutes more saw us steaming out of the harbor. Dorothy was with us. Further discussion had been useless.
“Not much like the Black Arrow,” I said, as we came out rather slowly into the Channel.
“You wait till she gets speeded up,” said Tom. “She can go. I proved that yesterday.”
He was right. Once out into the Channel, our speed gradually increased, till we were making good progress. In an hour we sighted the French coast from the little bridge, and Tom, beside the skipper, was making for the cross on the chart.
“We’ll sight her, if she hasn’t gone directly away from us, inside of fifteen minutes,” Tom said. Dorothy stood beside the wheel, ranging the whole horizon with her binoculars. She had thrown aside her hat, and a loosened tress of her hair flew lightly across my face as I stood beside her.
“Two sails off that point,” she announced, in a few moments. “They look more like those tubs of French fishing-boats than a yacht,” she said shortly. “Look at them, Jim.”
She handed her glasses to me. The horizon, for five miles in any direction from the point where we were heading, showed but the two sails she had mentioned, and we headed directly for them. As we neared them, we saw that Dorothy’s eyes had proved true. They were wide, clumsy, fishing craft, such as sail from the harbor of Boulogne, or hang in miniature as votive offerings before the altars of the cathedral. Undecked and open, they could hold no complicated apparatus. Their crews were sturdy, jerseyed fishermen, who stared in open-mouthed wonder, as our yacht came up alongside the first, and a volley of questions came in rapid French from the beautiful girl on the bridge.
With instinctive courtesy, every sailor on either boat removed his cap as she spoke, and the skipper gave answer in slow, deeply considered words. “No, we have seen no yacht except your own. Hein! is it not so?” he turned to the sailors.
A chorus of affirmatives came back. There had been no other vessel off this point save the Virginie of their own town, (an expressive thumb pointed to the other boat,) for four, five hours. They would surely have seen it if there had been. Tom consulted his chart and consulted our own skipper. It was the very spot. With knitted brow, he ordered the boat headed for the other fishermen. I pulled a half sovereign from my pocket.
“Buvez avec moi, mes garçons,” I cried, and flung the coin into the fishing boat. A chorus of “Merci’s” followed our path.