It was true that she had repulsed him; but that, he remembered, once more with a sense of compunction, was what he deserved for entering into an alliance against her with her venial father. He was glad now that he had acquiesced in her dismissal of him, since to have stood firm and broken her to his will would have brought disaster upon both of them. He felt that she had not wholly escaped him, after all: by and by he would go back and seek her favour by different means. Then she might, perhaps, forgive him and listen. CHAPTER XV THE FIRST MISADVENTURE. The breeze freshened fiercely with the red and fiery dawn, and Vane, who had gone below, was advised of it by being flung off the locker on which he sat with coffee and biscuits before him, in the saloon. The jug, overturning, spilled its contents upon his person, the biscuits were scattered, but he picked himself up in haste and scrambled out into the well. He found the sloop slanted over with a good deal of her lee deck submerged in rushing foam, and Carroll bracing himself against the strain upon the tiller. "I'll let her come up when you're ready," Carroll remarked. "We had better get some sail off her, if we mean to hold on to the mast." He put down his helm, and the sloop, forging round to windward, rose upright, with her heavy mainboom banging to and fro. After that, they were desperately busy for the next few minutes, and Vane wished they had engaged a hand in Vancouver, instead of waiting to hire a Siwash somewhere up the coast. There was a headsail to haul to windward, which was difficult, and the mainsheet to get in; and then the two men, standing on the slippery inclined deck, struggled hard to haul the canvas down to the boom. The jerking spar smote them in the ribs; once or twice the reefing tackle beneath it was torn from their hands; but they mastered the sail, tying two reefs in it, to reduce its size, and the craft afterwards drove away with her lee rail just awash. "You had better go down and get some biscuits," Vane said to his comrade. "You mayn't have an opportunity later." "It looks like that," Carroll agreed. "The wind's backing northwards, and that means more of it before long. You can call if you want me."