it has to be learned, and it
is a puzzling thing to grasp the meaning of the way in which it seems to
act.

To sit and hold the rudder and go right away with the wind dead astern
is not so difficult, but to try and sail a boat with the wind almost in
your teeth, is, at the first time of asking, rather a strain upon the
unaccustomed mind. The first thing which Max discovered was that, as
soon as the sail was up, the boat seemed to try to take, so to speak,
the bit in its teeth and run off to the north; the next, that he held in
the tiller whip, spur, reins, everything for governing this
strangely-mobile creature, and at the hint from Kenneth he had changed
its course.

But now, as it could not go north, the boat seemed to be trying to go
due east, and, with the sail well filled and careening over, she
literally rushed through the water, which sparkled in her wake.

"But he said I must tack," thought Max. "Why not try and sail straight
away?"

He tried to do this by turning the tiller more and more, but as he did
so the speed of the boat grew less and less, and finally she stood
still, with the sail shivering, and when he gave the sheet a shake, the
sail gradually filled on the other side; the boat's head swung round,
and he found that he was rushing due west, straight for the cliff upon
which Kenneth and Scoodrach were watching his course.

For a few moments Max lost his head--metaphorically, of course, and not
Carlistically. He sat, tiller in hand, gazing aghast at the great wall
of rock with the rugged _debris_ of fallen masses at the bottom, upon
which in a very few minutes the boat would rush with a sharp crash, and
then, mistily and in a chaotic manner, he realised that there would be a
miniature wreck, similar on a small scale to those of which he had so
often read in the papers.

"What shall I do?" he gasped; and he gazed away to the right, at where
he could see the two boys upon their shelf, too far away for their
voices to be heard.

There was no help or advice to be had, so he was thrown back upon his
own brain for the very best help there is in the world--self-help; and,
making a bold grasp, as it was hovering in a mist, he caught his lost
head again, and held it tightly.

As he did this, he recalled that he held the guiding principle of the
boat in his hand, pressed the tiller hard, and, to his great delight,
the little vessel made a beautiful curve, ran right up in the wind, the
sail flapped an