"Round Land's End, sir?" asked Hayes.
"Hardly," rejoined Mr. Graham. "We'll have to be satisfied if we make St. Ives before night. There'll be wind before very long. By the by, Findlay, while we are clearing away and snugging down, you might go ashore and get a couple of tins of petrol and a quart of lubricating oil."
Jock went off in the dinghy. Whilst he was away Hayes washed up, Mr. Graham dried the breakfast things, and Desmond stowed them away.
"Are we going to tow the yacht out with the dinghy, sir?" asked Findlay on his return.
"No, we'll have the motor on the Spindrift's transom," replied the Scoutmaster. "For one thing, the propeller will be a fairly big drag for the dinghy when we're towing her under sail."
"We can unship it from the dinghy, sir," said Findlay. "It only weighs about forty or fifty pounds."
"Quite so," agreed Mr. Graham, "but even that weight requires some lifting in a small dinghy. If there's any roll on outside it will be a difficult matter to unclamp the motor and transfer it on board the yacht. We'll see what we can do now."
Luckily the edge of the transom projected a couple or three inches above the Spindrift's after-deck, and to this projection the outboard engine was clamped, and the propeller adjusted until it was the right depth below the surface. Meanwhile Findlay had mixed the petrol and oil in the right proportions and had filled the tank.
"We've quite a lot of water in the bilges, sir," announced Hayes, who had lifted up one of the floor-boards.
"Yes, by Jove, we have," agreed Mr. Graham. "She's probably not taken up properly. Get the pump going, Hayes."