Jack looked up sideways at the gloomy sky. Though the wind was coming in puffs, it by no means had the force of a gale.
“What do you say to a run out there, Rod?” he asked suddenly, turning to his friend.
“Out where? To Four Fathom Shoal?” His face lighted up at the prospect of such an adventure. “I’m game, if you are.”
“Why not?” said Jack. “I don’t know that we could do much when we got there, but the sloop can make it easily enough, and you never know! They might be jolly glad to let us bring them ashore.”
“Well, I ain’t saying you wouldn’t get there safe,” observed Cap’n Crumbie, “though you’d have to tack all the way against this so’easter. But the tug may get there afore you can.”
“According to you, though, the tug hasn’t started from Rockmore yet,” protested Jack. “There isn’t a soul wants to go across the ferry at present, so why shouldn’t we make the run?”
“Go to it!” said the watchman. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
“Come on, Rod,” said Jack, suiting the action to the word and a few moments later the sloop was standing straight down the harbor, past Gull Island, past the end of the breakwater, out into the open. Jack found the sea was rougher than he had anticipated when they came abreast of Greenport Light, but the wind was nothing to cause alarm. The Sea-Lark danced and cavorted, heeling well over as she raced up one side of a green sea and dived down the other. The water boiled in her wake, for Jack was carrying every stitch of canvas he could spread to the breeze.
Thump-thumpety-thump! went the curling crests of waves as they slapped her bow. Always she rose before the onrushing swirl like a bird in fact as well as in name, but sometimes the crest curled a little higher, swished up at her prow, and shot over the deck, drenching everything on board. Several times her cockpit was awash, and some of the water went down the companionway into the cabin, but the rest gushed back through the scuppers into the sea.