"Not much," replied Jack, in a matter-of-fact tone. "At any rate, I don't suppose it will affect us."
"When do you propose to make a start?" Stockton did not immediately reply, but, gaining the cockpit, he unlaced a portion of the awning.
"Now if you like," he replied. "The young flood has set in, though, but with the wind in this quarter we can stem it and pick up the east-going tide outside. Just hand me down that bundle of charts."
Gerald did so, and his chum picked out one of the English Channel.
"We ought to make St. Catherine's before daybreak," continued Jack "And then with a decent slice of luck we can make a slant across and pick up Cape Barfleur before sunset. It's barely fifty miles as the crow flies. So we'll get under way now, and when we are outside the harbour you can turn in. I had a good spell below during the day, so a night's watch won't trouble me."
"All right; I'm game," repeated Tregarthen. Twenty minutes later the _Playmate_ was heeling over to the steady breeze. Her voyage, that was fated to be the forerunner of a wealth of peculiar adventures, had begun.
A FEW years ago a commander-in-chief is reported to have declared that our seamen are the worst boat-sailors in the world, while another naval officer of high rank has written: "I don't think there is any foreign navy that is not better than us in the handling of their boats--ours is a disgrace." Thanks, however, to the forethought of the Admiralty in providing fore and aft rigged cutters for the use of the cadets at Dartmouth this stigma is gradually being removed.
Owing to the opportunities thus provided Gerald Tregarthen was no novice on board a yacht. He had steered the college cutters to victory on several occasions, and, now once having acquired the knack of dealing with the _Playmate's_ peculiarities, he was quite capable of taking charge of the tiller while Jack Stockton attended to the numerous duties so necessary when about to make a long passage.
Gallantly breasting the young flood the _Playmate_ thrashed her way down the well-lighted channel, passed between the sandy dunes that mark the entrance to Poole Harbour, and negotiated the long, buoyed passage under the lee of Studland Heath. Then, the outer bar-buoy being rounded, the yacht was gybing, and her course shaped for the as yet invisible Needles Light.