Half the day had slipped by, when the breeze freshened further and the sun broke through. The sloop was then rolling wildly as she drove along with the peak of her mainsail lowered before a big following sea. Vane looked thoughtful as he gripped the helm, because a head ran out from the beach he was following three or four miles way, and he would have to haul the boat up to windward to get round it. This would bring the combers upon her quarter, or, worse still, abeam. Kitty Blake was below; Mrs. Marvin had made no appearance yet, and he spoke to Carroll, who was standing in the well. "The sea's breaking more sharply, and we'd get uncommonly wet before we hammered round yonder head," he said. "There's an inlet on this side of it where we ought to find good shelter." "The trouble is that if you stay there long you'll be too late for the directors' meeting," Carroll answered. "They can't have the meeting without me, and, if it's necessary, they can wait," Vane pointed out. "I've had to. Many an hour I've spent cooling my heels in offices before the head of the concern could find time to attend to me. No doubt it was part of the game, and done to impress me with a due sense of my unimportance." "It's possible," Carroll agreed, smiling. Kitty Blake made her appearance in the cabin entrance just then, and Vane smiled at her. "We're going to give you a rest," he announced. "There's an inlet close ahead where we should find smooth water, and we'll put you all ashore until the wind drops." There was no suspicion in the girl's face now, and she gave him a grateful glance before she disappeared below with the consoling news. Soon afterwards, Vane luffed into a tiny bay, where the sloop rode upright in the sunshine, with loose canvas flapping softly in a faint breeze while the cable rattled down. They got the canoe over, and when he had landed Mrs. Marvin and her little girl, both of whom looked very woebegone and the worse for the voyage, into her, Vane glanced round. "Isn't Miss Blake coming?" he asked. Mrs. Marvin, who was suggestively pallid, smiled. "She's changing her dress." She glanced at her own crumpled attire and added: "I'm past thinking of such things as that." They waited some minutes, and then Vane called to Kitty, who appeared in the entrance to the cabin, "Won't you look in the locker, and bring anything you think would be nice? We'll make a fire and have supper on the beach; if it isn't first-rate, you'll be responsible." A few minutes later they paddled ashore, and Vane landed them on a strip of shingle with a wall of rock behind it, to which dark firs clung in the rifts and crannies. The sunshine streamed into the hollow, the wind was cut off, and not far away a crystal stream came splashing down a ravine.