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I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work to get the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of the implements, into the kayak, making haste to put out to the toilless luxury of being borne on the water, after all the weary trudge. Within fourteen hours I was coasting, with my little lug-sail spread, along the shore-ice of that land.
'I ken that, was Nicol's philosophical reply. 'Ye had no business to make fast the sheet of the lug-sail; ye might have drooned the lot of us. Nicol nodded. He had sinned, and was prepared to suffer. 'Have ye ought to say against your being lowered into the dungeon? 'I have not. Do you think I'm feared? said Nicol scornfully. 'Ye will not pay the penny? 'Deil a penny will I pay!
It was still distant when night came and swallowed it up; and all night I toiled to keep my blaze bright and high, and the eyes of the Beasts shone out of the darkness, marvelling. In the dawn the sail was nearer, and I saw it was the dirty lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed strangely. My eyes were weary with watching, and I peered and could not believe them.
'Yes, I am; and the rope too. How am I to get up? Rob turned quickly. 'Duncan, down to the boat with ye! Loosen the lug-sail halyards, and bring them up quick, quick! Duncan was off like a young roe. He slid down the crags; he dashed through the larch-wood; he jumped into the boat on the beach.
There is the same long, low, fish-like form, the same deck, almost on a level with the water, the same hole in the centre for the admission of the man, the same apron to keep out water, and the same long, double-bladed paddle, which is dipped on each side alternately. The "Rob Roy" has, however, the addition of a small mast, a lug-sail, and a jib.
It is as though a flock of birds were being loosed into the air as though pigeon after pigeon were being set free out of a basket for home. Lug-sail after lugsail, brown as the underside of a mushroom, hurries out among the waves. A green little tub of a steamboat follows with insolent smoke. The motor-boats hasten out like scenting dogs.
Within the basin were lying many canoes, and also boats of a larger sort that carried oars and that were rigged with a sort of lug-sail; but these all kept away from us, even as all the boats which we had seen during our passage of the lake had given us a wide berth.
To the right of us I saw the captain of a junk chop away his mooring line with an axe and spring to help his crew at the hoisting of the huge, outlandish lug-sail. But to the left the first heads were popping up from below on another junk, and I rounded up the Reindeer alongside long enough for George to spring aboard. The whole fleet was now under way.
As he spoke he peered across the marsh toward the river, and Colville, following the direction of his gaze, saw the black silhouette of a large lug-sail against the eastern sky, which was softly grey with the foreglow of the rising moon. "What is that?" asked Colville. "That's Loo Barebone going up with the sea-breeze. He has been down to the rectory. He mostly goes there in the evening.
Presently the boat's lug-sail, which spread above and before us like a great blot of ghostly grey against the starlit sky, began perceptibly to pale and brighten until it stood out clear and distinct, bathed in richest primrose light, with the shadow of the mast drawn across it in ebony-black.
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