“Five minutes more of this sailing, and we shall fool Captain Sam once more,” said Bob. The five minutes were nearly up. They had but another leg to run to round the head of Saddle Island. They stood out till they had one and all declared that they could clear it on the next tack; they were all ready to go about. George Warren stood with one hand on the tiller and the other ready to grasp the main-sheet. Joe and Arthur Warren were waiting impatiently to trim the jib-sheets, and then—and then George Warren took their breaths away. All at once he jammed the tiller over, threw the _Spray_ clear off the wind, let the main-sheet run, and before they scarcely knew what had happened, instead of standing in to round the head of Saddle Island, the little _Spray_ was running dead before the wind and heading squarely back for the point around which the _Nancy Jane_ must soon come in sight. It was so quickly done that at first they thought there was some mistake, and Arthur and Joe and Bob rushed to the stern to help bring her around again; but George Warren, with a firm, set look on his face, stood them off. “Oh, I say, George, you’re not going to give it up now, are you?” cried young Joe, who had been in high spirits not a moment before. “That’s what,” responded his brother, quietly. “I’ve thought it all out at last, and I’ve come to the conclusion we are doing the cowardly thing to run away. We have got to face the thing, and we may as well do it first as last. Besides, we didn’t set out to run away when we started.” “That’s a fact,” said Tom. “We have sort of drifted into this running away business without realizing what we were doing. Now the best thing we can do is to go back and have it out with Colonel Witham.” “It’s not Colonel Witham that I hate to face,” said George. “It’s father and mother. And the part they’ll feel worst about is that we did not stay and talk it over with them.” “That’s so,” added Arthur. “What a lot of loons we were to come down here.” “Shall I pull the centreboard up?” asked Henry Burns. “You bet!” answered George Warren. “And we’ll take a leaf out of your book, Henry, and we won’t worry over what cannot be helped. We’re doing the right thing now, anyway, so there’s that much to feel good about.” “There’s the _Nancy Jane_,” said Henry Burns. Sure enough, Captain Sam’s pride was just turning the point, and Captain Sam, looking at the _Spray_ coming down free and pointing its nose right at him, could hardly believe his eyes. “It’s them, all right,” he assured the squire and the colonel. “They are coming back; tired of being runaways, I guess. Well, I thought they would get sick of it after a night or two away from home. They ain’t the kind of boys to enjoy running away.” “Humph!” snorted the colonel. “They’re a lot of young scamps and scapegraces,” snarled the squire. Getting aground and spending a night in a bed that the colonel swore was stuffed with pig iron and seaweed had not improved their tempers.