“Two, I think,” replied Harvey. “We’ll watch her close, though. I’m afraid we shall need a third. But we’ll work her back as far as we can before we tie another. It’s growing dark, and we must make time.”
It was true, and ominously so. With the alteration of the wind the sky had darkened, and was becoming overcast. Night would soon be upon them, and a stormy one.
Nor had they beaten back more than a half-mile, in the teeth of the wind, before Harvey luffed and hauled the main-sheet in flat.
“We’ve got to put in a third reef,” he said, soberly. “We don’t need it quite yet, but we shall very soon, and we don’t want to have to reef out here in the night.”
They lowered the sail a little and tied in the reef, and the Viking stood on again. But already the sea was beginning to roll up heavily from the northeast, having a long sweep of water to become agitated in—the stretch of bay that lay between Loon and South Haven Islands. The wind had become a storm, a black, heavy nor’easter. In another half-hour, rain began to drive upon them.
But the good yacht Viking stood it well, and they had worked up to within about half a mile of the foot of Loon Island, though still a mile away from it out in the bay, when the wind and sea perceptibly increased.
“We can’t make the harbour,” muttered Harvey. “We’ll try for the little harbour at the head of the island.”
The inhabitants of Loon Island called that end the head which fronted seaward, and there was a good harbour there; that is, not what the fishermen called a “whole” harbour, protected on all quarters, but good as the wind now blew. They headed more to the eastward and stood up for that.
But when, at length, Harvey peered ahead, straining his eyes in the gathering darkness for a favourable moment to come about, he could see no apparent difference in the seas. They were all huge, and they beat over the bows of the Viking in one steady, dashing spray.
“She won’t do it,” said Harvey.