“I—can’t—unknot it!” shrieked the other girl again.
“The sheet!” cried Jessie. “Don’t tell me you have been so foolish as to tie that sheet?”
“All right. I won’t tell you. But I have,” replied her chum, evidently trying with all her ingenuity to untie the snarl into which she had recklessly allowed the rope to get.
The sheet-rope governed the management of the sail. Knotted to a cleat at Amy’s hand when they first got aboard, the strain of the wind-filled sail had now pulled it so tight that the girl’s fingers could not manage it at all.
Her brother, Darry, and Burd Alling, his chum, had taught both Jessie and Amy to make certain naval knots which could be slipped easily in an emergency like this. But Amy had forgotten all about that. She had wound the end of the sheet about the cleat and tied a “hard” knot.
“Wish I had a knife!” wailed the careless girl. “Oh, Jessie! pay off so as to take the strain off the rope. Maybe——”
But just then another burst of wind swooped down upon the canoe. The latter shot ahead, its nose buried in foam, traveling so fast that Jessie was really frightened.
“Wait! Wait till it’s quiet,” she shouted to Amy.
If she changed the course of the canoe then, or tried to, Jessie realized that the craft would shoot sidewise to the wind and in all probability the boom would swing over and the weight of the canvas would capsize the light craft. It was a ticklish situation.
Amy was still crying out with alarm. Jessie tried to hold the steering paddle firm. And all the time the canoe tore on, through, rather than over, the rising waves. The spray continued to come inboard in sheets. The girls were saturated.