He extracted an old silver watch from somewhere under his jersey and gave me the time.
‘I wish to be home by about a quarter past four,’ said I.
He answered that he would see to it, and, seizing hold of a rope which passed through the top of the mast, he hoisted the sail. He then came to where I was sitting, and set the little sail upon the mast at the stern, and when this was done he grasped the tiller, and the boat, feeling the pressure of the breeze in her broad canvas—for though she was a small boat she carried a sail that I would think was disproportionately large for her size—heeled over and cut through the water on her side very quickly.
‘It’s a nice soldier’s wind for the land, lady,’ said the boatman.
‘What is a soldier’s wind?’ I asked.
‘Why,’ he answered, ‘a wind that allows ye to go there and back wherever ye may be bound to.’
‘The coast looks a long way off, Hitchens.’
‘It’s vurking up a bit hazy, lady, but there’s nothen to hurt.’