heart beat, as he wondered
whether he would ever get safe to land.

Trying to recall the action of Scoodrach at starting, he seized the rope
and began to haul upon the yard, to find, to his great delight, that it
rose steadily and well, the line running quite easily through the block
till the gaff was pretty well in its place, and the sail gave a flap
which startled him and made the boat careen.

Then he stopped short, hardly knowing what to do next, but the right
idea came, and he made the rope fast, crept back cautiously over the
thwart to seat himself by the tiller, and, almost to his wonder, found
that the boat was running easily along.

Taking the handle of the tiller and the sheet, he drew a breath of
relief, for the whole business was easier than he expected, and already
he was fifty yards from the face of the cliff, and gaining speed, when
he heard a hail.

"Max! Ahoy!"

He looked sharply round and up, to see Kenneth waving his glengarry; and
his next words sounded faint in the great space:

"Starboard! starboard! Going wrong."

To put his helm to starboard was so much Arabic to Max, but he had
turned the handle in one direction, and he was going wrong, so he felt
that to turn it the other way must be right. Pressing hard, then, he
found that what he did had the effect of turning the boat half round,
and making it go more slowly and diagonally in the direction from which
the wind blew, and somewhat more toward the shelf where his friends were
imprisoned, so that he could see them waving their caps, as moment by
moment they seemed more distant.

And now, for the first time, as he caught sight of a pile of ruins far
away to his right, he realised that he had been going away from Dunroe,
which lay to the south, while now he was sailing south-east; and his
spirits rose as he felt that he must be right in trying to reach that
castle, which he remembered as being one that Kenneth had pointed out.

He turned his head again in the direction of the shelf, and there, high
up, were the two boys, still waving their caps, either by way of
encouragement or to try and give him advice by signs. But he could not
tell which, neither could he signal in turn, for both hands were full;
so, setting his teeth, and with a wonderful feeling of exhilaration and
excitement, at which he was surprised, he devoted himself to his task.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

A TERRIBLE JOURNEY.

Bailing a boat is like most other things,