Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/333

Rh companion, stood beside him for a moment with her hand on the tiller.

"Better slack the fore-sheet," she said suddenly.

The young man looked helplessly at her. He had not the slightest idea of her meaning, did not in fact know the difference between a fore-sheet and a mainsail. And it was just to find out the depth of his ignorance that she had spoken.

"Never mind," she said, "I'll do it myself."

She slackened and made fast the rope, and took hold of the tiller again. The sails shook and filled softly as they glided out from under the wall. The soft breeze blew straight behind them, the tide was just beginning to ebb. She loosed the main sheet a little, and the water hissed as they spun down under the grey town towards the harbour's mouth.

A dozen vessels lay at anchor below the town quay, their lamps showing a strange orange yellow in the moonlight; between them the minister saw the cottages of Ruan glimmering on the eastern shore, and over it the coastguard flagstaff, faintly pencilled above the sky-line. It seemed to him that they were not shaping their course for the little town.

"I thought you told me," he said at length, "that Mrs.the dying woman—lived across there."

The girl shook her head. "Not in Ruan itsel'—Ruan parish. We'll have to go round the point."

She was leaning back and gazing straight before her, towards the harbour's mouth. The boat was one of the class that serves along that coast for