“No. Not yet,” the other girl whispered back.
His lunch finished, the black cat was returned to his master, then in the darkness the Flyaway edged out to the channel and away toward home.
In order to avoid the deeper channel where larger boats might be encountered, they sailed close to old Fort Skammel. There in the shadows of those ancient walls they met with further adventure.
As they came very close to the fort that at this point towers straight above the sea, the night suddenly went dark. It was as if some ghost of other days, a prisoner perhaps who had died in the fort’s dungeon, had turned off the light of the Universe.
Ruth shuddered and suddenly felt herself grow cold all over.
“Only a very dark cloud before the moon,” she told herself. “No danger. Know the way in the dark.”
So she did, but there was danger all the same. That she knew well enough in a moment, for of a sudden there came the pop-pop of a gasoline motor and a boat swinging round the point of the island began following them.
“No one lives on the island,” she said to Pearl in a low tone tense with emotion. “They must be following us. They burned Black Gull last night. Now they are after us. Well, if the wind holds they won’t get us.”
She put her boat exactly before the wind. Her deck tipped till it dipped water. Yet the staunch-hearted girl did not alter the course by so much as an inch.
“Show ’em, Flyaway. Show ’em!” She spoke in tender tones as if the schooner were a child.