“We've got to hitch to windward of that Mark Boat somehow,” George cried.
“There's no windward,” I protested feebly, where I swung shackled to a stanchion. “How can there be?”
He laughed—as we pitched into a thousand foot blow-out—that red man laughed beneath his inflated hood!
“Look!” he said. “We must clear those refugees with a high lift.”
The Mark Boat was below and a little to the sou'west of us, fluctuating in the centre of her distraught galaxy. The air was thick with moving lights at every level. I take it most of them were trying to lie head to wind, but, not being hydras, they failed. An under-tanked Moghrabi boat had risen to the limit of her lift, and, finding no improvement, had dropped a couple of thousand. There she met a superb wulli-wa, and was blown up spinning like a dead leaf. Instead of shutting off she went astern and, naturally, rebounded as from a wall almost into the Mark Boat, whose language (our G. C. took it in) was humanly simple.
“If they'd only ride it out quietly it 'ud be better,” said George in a calm, while we climbed like a bat above them all. “But some skippers—will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat think she is doing, Tim?”
“Playin' kiss in the ring,” was Tim's unmoved reply. A Trans-Asiatic Direct liner had found a smooth and butted into it full power. But there was a vortex at the tail of that smooth, so the T. A. D. was flipped out like a pea from off a finger-nail, braking madly as she fled down and all but over-ending.
“Now I hope she's satisfied,” said Tim. “I'm glad I'm not a Mark Boat... Do I want help?” The General Communicator dial had caught his ear. “George, you may tell that gentleman with my love—love, remember, George—that I do not want help. Who is the officious sardine-tin?”
“A Rimouski drogher on the look-out for a tow.”
“Very kind of the Rimouski drogher. This postal packet isn't being towed at present.”