And so they set out. ’Twas a long, easy, regular stroke that Martin dropped into; just such a stroke as a man might adopt who looked for a moderately long drag to his vessel--ten or fifteen miles, say. But this was a hundred and fifty miles. Yes, and more, with allowances to be made for the set of wind and tide and the natural perversity of the dory itself. Whoever has rowed a dory knows that nothing will swerve more easily off its course--that is, if you don’t know how. Martin Carr knew how, but the young fellow with him did not; and it was Martin Carr’s business to make such allowances as would offset the uneven rowing of the lad. They rowed on. To the boy the silences were appalling. For an hour at a time nothing would be said. Martin, with the instinct of an old trawler, was husbanding every ounce of energy; the boy was numb, overwhelmed. A hundred and fifty miles! The thought of it! He did not shrink from the thought of death, but a hundred and fifty miles of this work! He began to figure it out. Say they drove the dory ten feet a stroke. That was more than five hundred strokes to a mile--one hundred and fifty times five hundred--how much? How slow he was to figure now--but, yes, that was 75,000 strokes. Good Lord! one, two, three--why, it would take twenty-four hours just to count 75,000, without rowing at all. But to row--to reach out with the arms and haul those two heavy blades through a heavy sea--one--two--three--and every other stroke ineffective, certainly for him, if not for the strong-backed Martin Carr, because of the unevenness of the sea. Why, it would take a week, night and day. He began to figure it up another way. Suppose they made two miles an hour. That was forty-eight miles a day--three days in all. But allowing for cross-tides and cross-winds, the constant heading of the dory straight again--say four days. Four days! And nothing to eat and nothing to drink during those four days of work and toil. And that meant that they must never vary from their course. Naturally they would vary. Say six days and six nights. But no man can row night and day for six days and nights without food and drink. Not even Martin, wonderful man that he was, could do it. Say they rested one-third of the time--eight hours a day. Ashore, men who did practically nothing slept eight hours a day. That surely would not be too much rest after rowing a heavy dory in a heavy sea.