"Let's sail before the wind two or three miles and then row back," Walter suggested. "I'd like to get to the hotel before mother comes."
"It'll be a tough pull," Jim replied as he glanced at the clumsy oars. "I'd rather row the Sally one mile than two."
"Harry and I will do that part of the work."
"Then let her go," and as Jim eased off on the sheet the old craft came around slowly, for she was by no means prompt in answering the helm.
"See that ship over there? How far away is she?" Harry asked as he pointed seaward, when the Sally was well under way.
"That ain't a ship," Jim replied with a slight tone of contempt because his companions were so ignorant. "She's a brigantine, an' hard on to three miles from here."
"Let's run over to where she is. We can row back by dinner-time easily enough."
Since his crew were to do all the work on the return trip Jim would have been perfectly willing had the distance been twice as far, and he gave assent by nodding his head in what he intended should be a truly nautical manner.
The brig, which was now the objective point of the trip, appeared to be a craft of about three hundred tons, and moving through the water slowly, under the influence of the rapidly-decreasing wind, on a course at right-angles with the one the Sally was pursuing. She was running with yards square, under her upper and lower topsails, foresail, jib and foretop-mast stay-sail, and the head-sheets were flowing.
"She ain't goin' so fast but what we can come up with her before the breeze dies away, I reckon, an' if she's becalmed they won't say anything agin our goin' aboard," Jim said after a few moments of silence, during which all hands gazed intently at the stranger.