Twice they had to head off fairly before the wind again, at the onrush of some enormous wave, but they got quickly on their course again, and, rolling frightfully, with the boys clinging far out to windward, the little yacht all at once felt the relief which the sheltering extremity of Gull Island afforded from the awful strain. Almost before they knew it, they were in smooth water once more, riding easily at the entrance to the Thoroughfare. “Whew!” cried George Warren, as he dropped the tiller and shook his hands, which were numb and aching from the strain and the cold rain. “That was a ride for life that I don’t care to repeat again in a hurry. Didn’t the little _Spray_ do well, though, eh, Arthur? She had a good excuse to founder if she hadn’t been staunch. If she was only a little larger she wouldn’t have minded this at all.” “We did come flying across that bay and no mistake,” said Tom. “I thought we were going to founder twice or three times, though.” “Looks as though we were stranded here for some days, that’s the worst of it,” said George Warren. “This storm has just begun, by the looks of it. It’s a lonesome hole, too, down in this reach. Nobody ever comes here, except a few fishermen in the fall and spring. The Thoroughfare is all right, but it doesn’t lead to any particular place in the course of vessels, so it isn’t a regular thoroughfare really, like those over to the eastward more. Now and then a yacht goes through, just for the sail, but one has got to know the channel very well, for it isn’t charted accurately,—at least, so Cap’n Sam says.” “Well,” returned Arthur, “we are not making a race against time, so I don’t see as it matters much whether we stay here or some other part of the bay. We’ll just lie snug aboard here to-night, and then to-morrow we’ll get out and explore. There are some fishermen’s shanties around on the other side of some of those smaller islands, and we ought to be able to build up a fire in one of them and live there till the storm is over, so we won’t have to stay in this little cabin all the time.” “I’ll be glad enough to go down there for awhile now,” said Henry Burns, “and get dry and warm. Come on, Bob, let’s you and me start some coffee and biscuit going. You do the cooking, because you know how, and I’ll look on. I’ll get the dishes out, anyway.” There was scarcely room in the cabin of the _Spray_ for more than four of them to sit and eat, so they threw the mainsail over the stub of the boom and made a shelter out of it against the rain. There, just outside the cabin, Tom and Bob sat as they all ate supper, with the rain pouring down all around and spattering in under the edges of the canvas. It was uncomfortable and dreary at best, and they were all glad when time came to turn in, which they did by all crowding into the cabin, where they could at least keep dry, although stowed away like sardines.