"I think you had better rest yourself," replied Dory, as he drew out the oars from under the seats. "I will look out for the boat, and I think she will come out of the scrape all right."
"What are you going to do? Do you mean to row her over to Westport?" asked Bissell, panting with his last exertions.
"No; I don't think we should make much trying to row this boat nearly four miles against a head sea," answered Dory.
"But you can't land over on this side of the lake. Just see the waves breaking on the shore in Button Bay. The Silver Moon would be smashed into a thousand pieces," protested the skipper.
"Of course we can't make a landing on a lee shore in this weather," answered Dory, as he went forward.
Bissell could not make anything of Dory, and he looked at him only to wonder what he was going to do. The skipper had always believed that he knew all about sailing a boat; and in a moderate, or even a fresh breeze, he could do very well when everything went along smoothly. But he had never been trained, as the students at Beech Hill had, for seasons of emergency.
The Silver Moon miss-stayed probably because she had not a "good full," had fallen off into the trough of the sea, and rolled herself half full of water before the skipper thought of doing anything to overcome the difficulty. Under these trying circumstances, he was not instructed either by precept or actual trial what to do.
The throat halyard of the sail, Dory found when he went forward, had not been cast off. He got hold of the peak halyard and hauled on it till he got a good set on the mainsail.
"What are you about?" cried Bissell. "You will upset her as sure as you live! I let that part of the sail down because it blowed so hard. I was going to lower the whole sail, but I hadn't time. I was afraid the boat would sink if I didn't bale with all my might."