f-hour Weston kept the staggering over-canvased craft
on her feet by a quick thrust of the tiller or a slackening of the
sheet, and his companion appeared oblivious of the fact that he was
getting wetter and wetter. She was fast, and she went through the
little curling ridges with an exhilarating rush, while the foam
swirled higher up her depressed deck, and the water flung up by her
streaming bows beat in between her shrouds in showers. Then, when half
the deck dipped under, Weston thrust down his helm, and the craft,
rising upright, lay with her big mainsail thrashing furiously above
her.

For ten minutes Weston was very busy with it, and, when he had hoisted
it again with a strip along the foot of it rolled up, he crouched
forward in the spray struggling with the big single headsail, which
was a much more difficult matter. Once or twice he went in bodily when
the hove-down bowsprit put which he crawled, dipped under, but he
succeeded in tying up the foot of that sail too, and scrambled aft
again breathless and gasping. He noticed that his employer, who did
not seem to mind it, was almost as wet as he was.

"I'm sorry, but you told me I could let her go," he apologized.

Stirling smiled somewhat dryly.

"I'm not blaming you; but you don't quite finish. Wondering why I did
it, aren't you?"

Weston did not admit it, but perhaps his face betrayed him, for his
companion nodded.

"Well," he said, "you told me that you could sail a boat, and I wanted
to make sure of it. Seems to me anybody could hold the tiller when
she's going easy in smooth water. Know how I used to choose when I
wanted a chopper, in the days when I worked along with the boys? Well,
I gave the man an ax, set him up in front of the biggest tree I could
find, and made him chop."

There could be no doubt about the efficiency of that simple test, and
Weston recognized that it was very much in keeping with his employer's
character, though he fancied that it was one which, if rigorously
applied everywhere, would leave a good many men without an occupation.
He only laughed, however; and nothing more was said until the boat
reached in shoreward on another tack. It carried her round the long
point, and a deep, sheltered bay with dark pine forest creeping close
down to the strip of white shingle which fringed the water's edge
opened up. Then, as the trees slid past one another, a little clearing
in the midst of them grew rapidly wider, and Weston was somew