He asked his mother if she had any errand to send to Rodney, or any other of the crew. She had none. And then, as was his custom, he bade her a pleasant “good-morning,” by way of adieu, and departed.
If Percy could have looked back upon his mother, as he walked swiftly away he would have seen that she was watching him with an expression of countenance far from pleasant or satisfactory.
If the words she spoke to herself could have reached his ears, he would have heard her mutter with marked anxiety:
“Mercy! He must be warned! I must put him on guard at once. If Percy is bent upon discovering his secret, who shall say that he may not do it? He is sharp; and he can be stubborn. Heavens and earth! If he should discover! But he must not! Ralph must look to himself. There can be no danger if we are both careful. I know I can be so; and I think he will be.”
But the youth heard not; and it may have been well that ignorance in that direction was his portion. He was bound for the landing where we saw him step from his skiff to the shore on the previous afternoon.
It was distant half a mile from the cottage, the path lying through a deep wood most of the way.
The sun was just rising above the hills beyond the park when he reached it. He was in ample time.
He made quick work of getting his boat into the stream and his oars out, and he was not long in pulling to the lake.
Once there, where he could make use of the wind, he let drop the center board; then stepped the mast, and very soon thereafter the light craft was shooting away under a broad leg-of-mutton sail, like a race horse, that is, supposing that a race horse could travel like a duck.
The distance from the inner shore of the bay to the outer headlands was not far from two miles. The brig was to come from the south, so our pilot put his boat’s head in that direction, running it over Dead Man’s Reef, the great black rocks of which he could plainly see as he passed above them.