isk their lives, and maybe
enjoying the risk. But I held my peace, for I thought shame of my
terror, and before Dan too. So the four of us went out quietly the
back way and came to the quay, where we found a boat on the lee side,
afloat, and with the mast stepped, and all ready for hoisting the sail,
and I wondered if Dan's talking to the goodwife in the inn yard had had
anything to do with it, for the boats at that time of the year were
mostly upturned on the beach, and indeed most of the dingies and gigs
from the ships were also drawn up.

Robin McKelvie slipped down the quay-wall as nimbly as a cat, and
busied himself with the sail, doing what I know not, though I prayed he
might not loosen any reef, and his father followed, more slowly, for he
was a heavier man, but wonderfully active in a boat. Then Dan bade me
climb down, and I scrambled down and found my feet on a gunwale just as
I expected to feel the water, so I sat down in the boat suddenly, and
Dan was beside me in a wee while.

Robin had the sail up, and made fast, as his father cast off and took
the tiller, and the roar of the sea all round me as we sailed from the
lee of the quay at first filled me with fear, but soon I felt the skiff
rise to the first sea, and I forgot my terror in watching the helmsman.

"Ay, ay," he spoke softly; "they're coming now, the three sisters," and
his eyes seemed to pierce the gloom for the three rolling curling waves
as he shouldered the skiff over them. Sometimes I watched the water
curling over the gunwale, and wondered if ever again I would reach the
land, and then a wave would break somewhere near, and the helmsman
would mutter--

"I ken ye; I will be hearing your whispering," and it seemed to me as
if he were a cunning old warrior in the midst of well-tried foes, wary
and courageous, and always winning through. But in the middle of the
bay the waves rose madly round us, the stout skiff was tossed like a
cork, now perched giddily on the crest, and now racing madly to the
trough, and then to the crest again with a horrible side motion (which
I think seamen call yawing), most fearful of all. But McKelvie spoke
to his boat as I have heard horsemen speak to their horses.

When a squall struck us and the skiff lay down to it, he would croon
softly--

"You will not be killing yourself, lass--easy, easy,--oh, but you are
eager for the sea," and I knew that I was watching a master hand, a man
cunning in the moods of