oo.

"I won't say that, Simon, but foolish not to make ready for it."

I looked about when we rose to the next sea for the vessel. But no
vessel. I thought it hard. "Had you no distrust of Saul Haverick this
morning?" I asked him.

"I had. And last night, too, Simon."

"And you trusted him?"

"A hard world if we didn't trust people, Simon. I thought it over again
this morning and was ashamed, Simon, to think it in me to distrust a
shipmate. I wouldn't believed it of any man ever I sailed with. But no
use to fool ourselves longer. Make ready. Over with the fish, over with
the trawls, over with everything but thirty or forty fathom of that
roding line, and the sail, and one anchor, and the two buoys."

It was hard to have to throw back in the sea the fine fish that we'd
taken hours to set and haul for; hard, too, to heave over the stout gear
that had taken so many long hours to rig. But there was no more time to
waste--over they went. And we took the two buoys--light-made but sound
and tight half-barrels they were--and we lashed them to the risings of
the dory.

"And now the sail to her, Simon."

We put the sail to her.

"And stand by to cut clear our anchorage!" I stood by with my bait
knife; and when he called out, I cut, and away we went racing before
wind and tide; me in the waist on, the buoy lashed to the wind'ard side,
to hold her down, and he on the wind'ard gunnel, too, but aft, with an
oar in one hand and the sheet of the sail in the other.

"And where now?" I asked, when the wind would let me.

"The lee of Sable Island lies ahead."

The full gale was on us now--a living gale; and before the gale the sea
ran higher than ever, and before the high seas the flying dory.
Mountains of slate-blue water rolled down into valleys, and the valleys
rolled up into mountains again, and all shifting so fast that no man
might point a finger and say, "Here's one, there's one!"--quick and
wild as that they were.

From one great hill we would tumble only to fall into the next great
hollow; and never did she make one of her wild plunges but the spume
blew wide and high over her, and never did she check herself for even
the quickest of breaths, striving the while to breast up the side of a
mountain of water, but the sea would roll over her, and I'd say to
myself once again: "Now at last we're gone!"

We tumbled into the hollows and a roaring wind would drive a boiling
foam, white as milk, atop of us; we climbed up