“This is good,” said Miss Culpepper to herself; “almost as good as being a sea gull.”
Sea gulls raced her, jeered at her, showed themselves to her, now honey yellow against the sun, now snowflake white with the sun against them, and then left her, quarrelling away down the wind in search of something more profitable.
She passed little bays where the sea sang on beaches of pebble, and deep-cut cañons rose-tinted and showing the green of fern and the ash green of snake cactus and prickly pear. Sea lions sunning themselves on a rock held her eye for a moment, and then, rounding the south end of the island, a puff of westerly wind all the way from China blew in her face, and the vision of the great Pacific opened before her, with the peaks of San Clemente showing on the horizon twenty-four miles away to the southwest.
Not a ship was to be seen, with the exception of a little schooner to southward. She showed bare sticks, and Miss Culpepper, not knowing the depth of the water just there, judged her to be at anchor.
Here, clear of the island barrier, the vast and endless swell of the Pacific made itself felt, lifting the _Sunfish_ with a buoyant and balloonlike motion. Steering the swift-running boat across these gentle vales and meadows of ocean was yet another delight, and the flying fish, bright like frosted silver, with black, sightless eyes, chased her now, flittering into the water ahead of the boat like shaftless arrowheads shot after her by some invisible marksman.
The great kelp beds oiled the sea to the northward, and, remembering Joe’s advice, but not wishing to return yet a while, the girl shifted the helm slightly, heading more for the southward and making a beam sea of the swell. This brought the schooner in sight.
It was now a little after seven, and the appetite that waits upon good digestion, youth, and perfect health began to remind Miss Culpepper of the breakfast room at the Metropole, the snow-white tables, the attentive waiters. She glanced at her gold wrist watch, glanced round at Santa Catalina, that seemed a tremendous distance away, and put the helm hard astarboard.
She had not noticed during the last half minute or so that the engine seemed tired and irritable. The sudden shift of helm seemed to upset its temper still more, and then, all of a sudden, its noise stopped and the propeller ceased to revolve.