“No, no,” her father said “we will hef to go in a small boat. I hope you will not get wet, Sheila; there is a good breeze on the water this morning.”
“I think they are much safer in here than going around the islands just at present,” Sheila said.
“Ay, you are right there, Sheila,” her father said, looking at the direction of the wind. “They got in in a ferry good time. And they may hef to stay for a while before they can face the sea again.”
“And we shall become very great friends with them, papa, and they will be glad to take us to Jura,” she said with a smile, for she knew there was not much of the hospitality of Borvapost bestowed with ulterior motives.
They went down the steep path to the bay, where the Phœbe was lurching and heaving in the rough swell, her bowsprit sometimes nearly catching the crest of a wave. No one was on deck. How were they to get on board?
“They can’t hear you in this wind,” Sheila said. “We will have to haul down our own boat.”
And that, indeed, they had to do, though the work of getting the little thing down the beach was not very arduous for a man of Mackenzie’s build.
“I am going to pull you out to the yacht, papa,” Sheila said.
“Indeed you will do no such thing,” her father said, indignantly. “As if you wass a fisherman’s lass, and the gentlemen never wass seeing you before! Sit down in the stern, Sheila, and hold on ferry tight, for it is a rough water for this little boat.”
They had almost got out, indeed, to the yacht before any one was aware of their approach, but Pate appeared in time to seize the rope that Mackenzie flung him, and with a little scrambling, they were at last safely on board. The noise of their arrival, however, startled Johnny Eyre, who was lying on his back smoking a pipe after breakfast. He jumped up and said to Mosenberg, who was his only companion, “Halloa! here’s this old gentleman come on board. He knows you. What’s to be done?”