Before embarking they baled out the water in the boat, and then inclined her, first one side and then the other, to see if she had sprung a leak, but she had not. The ice-bow was then hoisted on board, as it would no longer be required, and would impede their sailing. Frances stepped in, and Bevis and Mark settled themselves to row out of the channel. With such a wind it was impossible to tack in the narrow strait between the islands. They had to pull their very hardest to get through. So soon as they had got an offing the sculls were shipped, and the sails hoisted, but before they could get them to work they were blown back within thirty yards of the cliff. Then the sails drew, and they forged ahead.
It was the roughest voyage they had ever had. The wind was dead against them, and no matter on which tack every wave sent its spray, and sometimes the whole of its crest over the bows. The shock sometimes seemed to hold the Pinta in mid-career, and her timbers trembled. Then she leaped forward and cut through, showering the spray aside. Frances laughed and sang, though the words were inaudible in the hiss and roar and the rush of the gale through the rigging, and the sharp, whip-like cracks of the fluttering pennant.
The velocity of their course carried them to and fro the darkening waters in a few minutes, but the dusk fell quickly, and by the time they had reached Fir-Tree Gulf, where they could get a still longer "leg" or tack, the evening gloom had settled down. Big Jack stood on the sh.o.r.e, and beckoned them to come in: they could easily have landed Frances under the lee of the hill, but she said she should go all the way now.
So they tacked through the Mozambique, past Thessaly and the bluff, the waves getting less in size as they approached the northern sh.o.r.e, till they glided into the harbour. Jack had walked round and met them. He held out his hand, and Frances sprang ash.o.r.e. "How _could_ you?" he said, in a tone of indignant relief. To him it had looked a terrible risk.
"Why it was splendid!" said Frances, and they went on together towards Longcot. Bevis and Mark stayed to furl sails, and leave the Pinta ship-shape. By the time they had finished it was already dark: the night had come.
On their way home they paused a moment under the great oak at the top of the Home Field, and looked back. The whole south burned with stars.
There was a roar in the oak like the thunder of the sea. The sky was black, black as velvet, the black north had come down, and the stars shone and burned as if the wind reached and fanned them into flame.
Large Sirius flashed; vast Orion strode the sky, lording the heavens with his sword. A scintillation rushed across from the zenith to the southern horizon. The black north held down the buds, but there was a force in them already that must push out in leaf as Arcturus rose in the East. Listening to the loud roar of the oak as the strength of the north wind filled them,--
"I should like to go straight to the real great sea like the wind," said Mark.
"We _must_ go to the great sea," said Bevis. "Look at Orion!"
The wind went seawards, and the stars are always over the ocean.
The End.