“What is it, Arthur?” exclaimed the others, excitedly. It did not seem possible there could be any chance of escape open, but they jumped eagerly at anything that offered a faint hope.
“Well,” said Arthur, in his deliberate manner, “you know the small opening between Spring and Heron Islands at the foot of Little Reach? Nobody ever ran a sailboat through there because it’s choked up with ledges. But you remember when the mackerel struck in to the Reach there last August, we all went down in the Spray for a week’s fishing. Well, one day Joe and I took the tender and worked our way clear through between Spring and Heron Islands to the bay outside. Now the Spray, with the centreboard up, does not draw very much more water than the tender, and by dropping the sails and all poling through, I think we can work her in clear to the other side.”
“We’ll try it,” said George Warren. “It is the only chance we have, so we’ve really no choice.”
And he put the tiller up and threw the Spray off the wind, while Arthur and Joe started the sheets. It was this sudden manœuvre which had startled Captain Sam.
They soon passed the entrance to Little Reach, two barren ledges shelving down into the water, and were well down the Reach when Captain Sam and the Nancy Jane headed into it.
“There they go,” cried Captain Sam, “like an ostrich sticking its head into the sand. Well, what can you expect of boys, anyway? We’ll overhaul them faster than ever now, because this big mainsail draws two to their one this way of the wind, and the jibs aren’t doing anything to speak of, the wind varies so in here.”
It was smooth water inside Little Reach, and, as there was now scarcely any motion to the Nancy Jane as she skimmed along by the quiet shores, the colonel and the squire began to revive a little, sufficient at least to regain their interest in the pursuit.
They were about a mile and a half down the Reach, and the Spray, not quite half a mile ahead, was apparently at the end of her cruise.
“They are at the end now,” cried Captain Sam, whose blood was up when it came to a race between the Nancy Jane and another, though smaller, craft. “We’ve got ’em like mice in a box.”
“By George! look there, colonel—look, squire!” he exclaimed, excitedly. “They have given it up. There go the sails. It’s all over. They may scoot ashore, but the island on either side is nothing more than a rock. Well, I vow! But I didn’t think they would quit so tamely after a game race.”