"No; wear her and let her jibe," said Weeks, "then you'll on'y have to
ease your sheets."
Duncan stood at the wheel, while Weeks, with the compass swinging
above his head, shouted directions through the companion. They sailed
the boat all that night with the wind on her quarter, and at daybreak
Duncan brought her to and heaved his lead again. There was rough sand
with blackish specks upon the tallow, and Weeks, when he saw it,
forgot his broken leg.
"My word," he cried, "we've hit the Fisher Bank! You'd best lash the
wheel, get our breakfast, and take a spell of sleep on deck. Tie a
string to your finger and pass it down to me, so that I can wake you
up."
Weeks waked him up at ten o'clock, and they ran southwest with a
steady wind till six, when Weeks shouted--
"Take another cast with your lead."
The sand upon the tallow was white like salt.
"Yes," said Weeks; "I thought we was hereabouts. We're on the edge of
the Dogger, and we'll be in Yarmouth by the morning." And all through
the night the orders came thick and fast from the cabin. Weeks was on
his own ground; he had no longer any need of the lead; he seemed no
longer to need his eyes; he felt his way across the currents from the
Dogger to the English coast; and at daybreak he shouted--
"Can you see land?"
"There's a mist."
"Lie to, then, till the sun's up."
Duncan lay the boat to for a couple of hours, till the mist was tinged
with gold and the ball of the sun showed red on his starboard quarter.
The mist sank, the brown sails of a smack thrust upwards through it;
coastwards it shifted and thinned and thickened, as though cunningly
to excite expectation as to what it hid. Again Weeks called out--
"See anything?"
"Yes," said Duncan, in a perplexed voice. "I see something. Looks like
a sort of mediaeval castle on a rock."
A shout of laughter answered him.
"That's the Gorleston Hotel. The harbour-mouth's just beneath. We've
hit it fine," and while he spoke the mist swept clear, and the long,
treeless esplanade of Yarmouth lay there a couple of miles from
Duncan's eyes, glistening and gilded in the sun like a row of dolls'
houses.
"Haul in your sheets a bit," said Weeks. "Keep no'th of the hotel, for
the tide'll set you up and we'll sail her in without dawdlin' behind
a tug. Get your mainsail down as best you can before you make the
entrance."
Half an hour afterwards the smack sailed between the pier-heads.
"Who are you?" cried the harbour-master.
"The _Willing Mind_."
"The _Willing Mind's_ reported lost with all hands."
"Well, here's the _Willing Mind_," said Duncan, "and here's one of the
hands."
The irrepressible voice bawled up the companion to complete the
sentence--
"And the owner's reposin' in his cabin." But in a lower key he added
words for his own ears. "There's the old woman to meet. Lord! but the
_Willing Mind_ has cost me dear."