"No reason
why we may not make the most of what breeze is left now."
"It is the merest chance if any man spies us by this time," I said.
"We will risk it."
So we stepped the mast and set sail, heading eastward at once. We
trimmed the boat by putting Dalfin in the bows, while I steered,
and the Saxon sat on the floor aft and tended sheet. I asked him to
steer, but he said the boat was my own, and that I was likely to
get more out of her than a stranger. The sail filled, and the boat
heeled to the steady breeze; and it was good to hear the ripples
wake at the bows, and feel the life come back to her, as it were,
after the idle drifting of the last hour. But there was no doubt
that the wind was failing us little by little.
About sunrise it breezed up again, and cheered us mightily. That
lasted for half an hour, and then the sail flapped against the
mast, and the calm we feared fell. The long swell sank little by
little until we floated on a dead smooth sea, under brightest
sunshine, with the seabirds calling round us. Nor was there the
long line of the Orkney hills to be seen, however dimly, away to
the eastward as we had hoped.
"How will the tide serve us hereabout?" asked Bertric presently.
"The flood will set in to the eastward in two hours' time," I
answered.
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