Then, when they had underrun both trawls, they would stand off in the Viking for a different feeding-ground for the cod, and fish until it was time to bait up the trawls for the night.
By degrees, they came to learn other feeding-grounds than the few Will Hackett had shown them, by following the little fleet; and they went now, occasionally, clear across the bay that lay between Loon Island and South Haven Island. This was often rough water, for they were at the very entrance to the bay, at the open sea, and the waves piled in heavily, even when the wind was light, showing there had been a disturbance far out. This took them to the shoal water in about the reefs at the foot of South Haven Island, a protected spot from the north, under the lee, but open to the full sweep of the sea from the south.
It was in this place at about five of the afternoon, on the fourth day following their arrival, that they experienced a sudden and startling change of weather.
They had gone out in the morning, with a light southerly breeze blowing, which had held steadily throughout the day. But now, near sundown, it had died away, so that they had weighed anchor and were about to beat back slowly across the bay, toward harbour.
They had scarcely got under way, however, when the wind, with extraordinary fickleness, fell off altogether, a strange and unusual calm succeeding.
“That’s queer!” exclaimed Harvey, glancing about with some apprehension. “Looks as though we were hung up here for the night. It won’t do to try to anchor near these reefs, and we can’t fetch bottom where we are. I guess we are in for a row of a mile to get under the lee of one of those little islands where we can lie safe.”
They were about half a mile out from the nearest line of reefs, floating idly on the long swells, with the sails flapping and the boom swinging inboard in annoying fashion.
Henry Burns groaned.
“Oh my!” he exclaimed. “What a beastly stroke of luck. I’m tired enough to turn in now. Don’t you suppose we’ll get a little evening breeze?”
“We may,” replied Harvey, “but there’s something queer in the way the wind dropped all of a sudden. I’m afraid we’ve seen the last of the breeze for to-day.”