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'I heard the Sheriff saying to Mother that the gipsies had come back again, said Tricksy. Reggie's dark eyes looked at Allan, who stopped his whittling. 'Look! said Marjorie abruptly, 'we're just rounding the headland. The Grahams wondered at the sudden silence which fell upon the group. 'We'll tack shore wards, Duncan, announced Mr. Stewart.
They are all sleepy, but the business on hand will soon cure them of this. They stand by. The helm is put down, and quickly the Chrysolite veers round in process of reaching the other tack. Will she do it? No! She trembles almost in the teeth of the wind, misses stays, and falls off again on to the old tack.
The sheet was paid off, and with dragging peavey-sticks instead of centerboard to hold the contrivance into the wind, the boat moved away on its tack across the lake. "Say good-by to your friend here!" Connick bellowed. "He says he thinks he'll go with us, strange country for to see."
There was time to tow her head round when we knew whence the morning wind would blow. Bertric coiled down the fall of the tack purchase, and nodded to Dalfin. "Food now, if there is to be any," he said. "What is in yon kettle?" Now that we were forward we had seen that against this end of the penthouse no fagots had been piled.
Rapidly, yet as steadily as though the crews were merely being put through their sail drill, the heavy folds of canvas were let fall from the yards, sheeted home, and hoisted, the head-yards were braced a- back, and in another minute or two the bows of both craft paid off, and they stood out from the land, close-hauled upon the larboard tack, to rejoin the rest of the fleet, our old ship delivering her port broadside, as the guns were brought to bear, by way of a parting salute.
But, at last, the task was accomplished, and then at the pipe of the boatswain, which we could now hear more clearly than before, the cutter, with all her crew and passengers still in her, was run up to the davits and secured, the ship at once filling and bearing away on her course again, now close-hauled on the starboard tack.
We'll have to put the ship about, McCarthy," he added to the mate; "we can't fetch that boat on this tack."
Twice a day the bugles sounded the call for breakfast and dinner, and the soldiers ceased to sprawl, and squatted on the deck around square tin cans filled with soup or red wine, from which they fed themselves with spoons and into which they dipped their rations of hard tack, after first breaking them on the deck with a blow from a bayonet or crushing them with a rifle butt.
Under their skillful management standing first on one tack and then on the other they had succeeded in outmaneuvering several of the swiftest-sailing vessels in the squadron. Two or three small sloops had succeeded in getting between the Alert and the island; but Harry, who was at the helm, did not deem them worthy a moment's notice.
The people on board the yacht, who watched eagerly the first sail they had seen since they had been ashore on that deserted part of the coast, soon made her out, with some disappointment, to be a small merchant brig beating up tack for tack along the inner edge of the reef probably with the intention to communicate and offer assistance.
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