“We’re going already,” gasped he, panting with the exertion of holding up his mast. “Look out now! here’s a nice breeze coming.”
He was right. Next moment the vast foresail fell with a run by the board, and the nine athletes below were nearly shot into the air by the force of the collapse. The coats, fortunately, held together sufficiently well to enable them to be hauled on board in a piece; but as they were soaked through, they afforded very little comfort to the distressed seamen, who decided forthwith to shorten sail at once, and take to the poles once more.
But by this time the “Cock-House,” thanks to the tremendous impetus it had just received, was twenty yards from the shore; and Wally, when he put down his pole, nearly went after it, in the vain search for a bottom.
“Here’s a go!” said he; “I say, you chaps, I almost fancy, after all, Rollitt must be up the mountain. What do you say?”
“I thought so all along,” said Fisher minor. “If he is, Yorke and Stratton will find him.”
“Good old Yorke! I say—we may as well back water a bit.”
Easier said than done. The old punt, now she was once out on the vasty deep, behaved pretty much as she and the wind between them pleased. For a time it looked very much as if, after all the explorers would reach their destination.
But presently—just, indeed, as the explorers had started a small football match (Association rules), Classics against Moderns, to keep themselves warm, the fickle breeze shifted, and sent the “Cock-House” lumbering inshore a mile or so north of the river-mouth. The Classics had just scored their 114th goal as she grounded, and it was declared by common consent that the voyage was at an end.
Luckily, she came ashore near to a little creek, into which, by prodigious haulings and shovings, she was turned; and here, in a rude way, they succeeded in mooring her until a more convenient season.
The call-over bell was just beginning to ring when the nine mariners got back to Fellsgarth.