With both engines going at easy speed—Mr. Armitage never believed in giving the motors full throttle except in cases of necessity—the yacht was doing a good eight and a half knots, leaving a clean wake astern.
"Bit of a difference to the Olivette," remarked Peter Stratton to Roche.
The latter, having finished with the engines for the time being, was exchanging the fume-laden atmosphere of the motor-room for the pure, early morning air of the North Sea.
"Aye," agreed Dick. "She'd be able to go up the Thames without scooping half the water out of the river and chucking it over the banks. And she's a clinking pair of motors—easy to start and very little vibration. Pre-war engines," he added, with a supreme contempt for anything built in these days of dear labour and inferior material.
"Getting on all right?" inquired the Scoutmaster, as he entered the wheel-house and glanced at the compass. "Steady, Peter, you're half a point out."
"It's jolly awkward steering by compass," remarked Stratton, as he swung the yacht back to the correct bearing.
"It is," agreed Mr. Armitage; "especially when you've no fixed object to steer by except the lubber's line. But be careful. I don't want to miss the North-East Gunfleet if I can help it."
By this time the low-lying Essex shore was lost in a haze. According to the chart, the Naze was three miles away on the starboard quarter, but as far as visibility went it might have been fifty. Not a buoy nor another vessel was in sight. The limited horizon was unbroken.
"It's pretty thick ahead," said the Scoutmaster, rubbing the moisture from the lenses of his binoculars. "Keep a good look-out, Woodleigh; we ought to be somewhere near the buoy by this time."
"Something white ahead," reported Woodleigh, who, as look-out, was perched "in the eyes" of the yacht.