"What," says his hostess, "with a barometer that won’t fall?"
"And the impossibility of getting back to land?"
"Why," she reminds him, laughing, "you were very anxious about getting back some days ago. What has made you change your wishes?"
He hesitates for a moment, and then he says—
"I believe a sort of madness of idleness has got possession of me. I have dallied so long with that tempting invitation of yours to stay and see the _White Dove_ through the equinoctials that—that I think I really must give in——"
"You cannot help yourself," his hostess says, promptly. "You have already promised. Mary is my witness."
The witness seems anxious to avoid being brought into this matter; she turns to the Laird quickly, and asks him some question about Ru-na-Gaul light over there.
Ru-na-Gaul light no doubt it is—shining white in the sun at the point of the great cliffs; and there is the entrance to Tobbermorry; and here is Mingary Castle—brown ruins amid the brilliant greens of those sloping shores—and there are the misty hills over Loch Sunart. For the rest, blue seas around us, glassy and still; and blue skies overhead, cloudless and pale. The barometer refuses to budge.
But suddenly there is a brisk excitement. What though the breeze that is darkening the water there is coming on right ahead?—we shall be moving any way. And as the first puffs of it catch the sails, Angus Sutherland places Mary Avon in command; and she is now—by the permission of her travelling physician—allowed to stand as she guides the course of the vessel. She has become an experienced pilot: the occasional glance at the leach of the top-sail is all that is needed; she keeps as accurately "full and by" as the master of one of the famous cuptakers.
"Now, Mary," says her hostess, "it all depends on you as to whether Angus will catch the steamer this evening."
"Oh, does it?" she says, with apparent innocence.
"Yes; we shall want very good steering to get within sight of Castle Osprey before the evening."
"Very well, then," says this audacious person.
At the same instant she deliberately puts the helm down. Of course the yacht directly runs up to the wind, her sails flapping helplessly. Everybody looks surprised; and John of Skye, thinking that the new skipper has only been a bit careless, calls out—