ts, allowed a margin for mistakes. Little by
little he brought her round, and paddled her clear of the cove into
open water.

Even then he might have desisted. For although the moon, by this time
high aloft behind his right shoulder, shone fair along the waterway to
the Island, the grey mass of which loomed up like the body of a
sea-monster anchored and asleep in the offing, he soon discovered that
his own strength would never suffice to drive the boat so far.
But almost on the moment of this discovery he made two others; the
first, that the tide--or, as he supposed it, the current--set down and
edged the boat at every stroke a little towards the Island, which lay,
in fact, well down to the westward of the cove, and by half a mile
perhaps; the second, that out here a breeze, hitherto imperceptible, was
blowing steadily off the land. He considered this for a while, and then
ordered Tilda, who by this time was shivering with cold, to pull up the
V-shaped bottom-board covering the well in the stern and fix it upright
in the bows. She did this obediently, and, so placed, it acted as a
diminutive sail.

Seeing that she still shivered, he commanded her to take the other oar,
seat herself on a thwart forward, and do her best to work it as they had
seen the farm-hands pulling after the stag. Again she obeyed, and he
fixed the thole-pins for her, and lifted the oar into place between
them. But with the first stroke she missed the water altogether, and
with the next caught a crab, which checked the boat dead. This would
never do; so, and still to busy her and keep her warm with exercise,
rather than in hope of help from her, he instructed her to stand with
her face to the bows, and push with the oar as she had seen him pushing.

He expected very little from this; but Tilda somehow caught the knack
after a few strokes, and for half a mile it helped them greatly.
By this time they were both warm enough, but desperately tired. So far
as they could judge, half of the distance was accomplished. They could
certainly not work back against the breeze blowing more and more freshly
off the land.

With a little steering on the boy's part they might even have trusted to
this breeze to carry them the rest of the way, had it not been for the
ebb tide. This too had steadily increased in strength, and now, unless
a miracle happened, would sweep them far to the westward of their goal.
Hitherto they had been working their oars one on