"
Amy cast her eye about. Here was a shore, a pier, a boat, a man to let
it....
"Would you like to go out?" asked the man himself perfunctorily, as from
the depths of a settled despair. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder
toward the sloop.
The two young people looked at each other. Neither looked at the sky.
"Well, I don't know," replied Cope slowly. The sloop was on a pretty small
scale; still, it was more to manage than a cat-boat.
"You have the theory, you know," said Amy demurely, "and some practice."
Cope looked at her in doubt. "Can you swim?" he asked.
"Yes," she returned. "I have some practice, if not much theory."
"Could you handle a jib?"
"Under direction."
"Well, then, if you really wish ..."
The misanthrope, with a twisted smile, helped them get away. The mainsail
took a steady set; but the jib, from the first, possessed an active life of
its own.
"Not that rope," cried Cope; "the other."
"Very well," returned Amy, scrambling across the cockpit. And so it went.
In six or eight minutes their small catastrophe overtook them. There came a
sudden flaw from out one of the racing gray cumuli, and a faint cry or two
from the distant shore.
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