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He rounded the boat up into the wind and Priscilla flung the anchor overboard. Then she picked her parcels one by one from the folds of the spinnaker in which they had wrapped themselves. "It won't do," she said, "to eat everything today at the first go off the way we did yesterday. Specially as we've promised to give Miss Rutherford luncheon. The duck, for instance, had better be kept."
Good-humored grins and rueful scowls chased one another over his face, according as he patted Parker's back or rubbed the bump on his own head. "Sure, there's a big knob there, my boy. There's only one thing that's harder than your fist, an' that's Spinnaker ice." Parker attempted some embarrassed reply in way of apology, for this magnanimity of his foe touched him.
There appeared to be three corners to the spinnaker, and all three were hooked turn about on the end of the boom. Even when the third was unhooked again and the one which had been tried first restored to its place Priscilla seemed a little dissatisfied with the result. Another of the three corners was caught and held by the clip-hooks on the end of the halliard.
Two nights after this, the wind still holding favourable, though rather fresher, so that our spars had as much as they could do, notwithstanding our preventer backstays, to bear the strain of our enormous spinnaker and balloon gaff-topsail, and the little Water Lily flying along at as our patent log told us over thirteen knots, we dashed past a half- consumed hencoop, a few charred pieces of planking, and some half-burnt spars, all of which had the appearance of having been but a short time in the water.
Had we luffed, for example, high enough for our spinnaker to jibe, the craft would probably have "turned the turtle" with us; or, if we had proved fortunate enough to escape this, we should most certainly have made a clean sweep of the spars. We were almost within hail of the leading boat when she fastened to an enormous whale.
I decided to take a nearer look at the place, and as this would involve a deviation from the course which the cutter was then steering, and would necessitate a jibe, I left the helm for a moment with a couple of turns of the tiller-rope round the head of the tiller, and went forward to take in the spinnaker.
Women may be unkind, but a ship is a ship, after all. One can not nurse the pain even of a shattered heart when running before a stiff wind with the spinnaker set and an open sea ahead. The thought decided him. The sea should be his bride. Jim did not stop to arrange, at the moment, just how this should be brought about, but his determination was none the less firm.
She laid the duck down again and covered it, a little regretfully, with the spinnaker. She took up the jampot which contained the caramel pudding. Her face brightened as she looked at it. "By the way, Cousin Frank," she said. "That word is inviolable." "That word?" "The sanctuary and secret word," said Priscilla.
The wind was blowing fresh, but steady, from about south-east, and as our course was west-north-west, we flew merrily away very nearly dead before the wind, with our spinnaker boomed out to port. Bob took the afternoon watch, and I retired below and lay down, as it was my eight hours out that night.
It was in spinnaker, up mizzen, all sheets by the wind, and we were moving slowly ahead, heaving the lead and straining our eyes for the fixed red light on the ruined fort that would give us our bearings to anchorage. The air was light and baffling, now east, now west, now north, now south; while from either hand came the roar of unseen breakers.
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