t as quickly, but not quite. Every
time that Barebone put about, the "Petite Jeanne" must perforce do the
same, and every time she lost a little in the manoeuvre. On a long tack
or running before the wind the bigger boat was immeasurably superior.
Barebone had but one chance--to make short tacks--and he knew it.
The Captain knew it also, and no landsman would have possessed the
knowledge. He was trying to run the boat down now.

Barebone might succeed in getting far enough away to be lost in the fog.
But in tacking so frequently he was liable to make a mistake. The bigger
boat was not so likely to miss stays. He passed so close to her that he
could read the figures cut on her stern-post indicating her draught of
water.

There was another chance. The "Petite Jeanne" was drawing six feet; the
dinghy could sail across a shoal covered by eighteen inches of water.
But such a shoal would be clearly visible on the surface of the water.
Besides, there was no shallow like that nearer than the Goodwins.
Barebone pressed out seaward. He knew every channel and every bank
between the Thames and Thorpeness. He kept on pressing out to sea by
short tacks. All the while he was peeping over the gunwale out of the
corner of his eye. He was near, he must be near, a bank covered by five
feet of water at low tide. A shoal of five feet is rarely visible on the
surface.

Suddenly he rose from his seat on the gunwale, and stood with the tiller
in one hand and the sheet in the other, half turning back to look at
"Petite Jeanne" towering almost over him. And as he looked, her bluff
black bows rose upward with an odd climbing movement like a horse
stepping up a bank. With a rattle of ropes and blocks she stood still.

Barebone went about again and sailed past her.

"Sans rancune!" he shouted. But no one heeded him, for they had other
matters to attend to. And the dinghy sailed into the veil of the mist
toward the land.

CHAPTER XXVI. RETURNED EMPTY

The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, blew the fog-bank away
before sunset.

Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth
and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. "Give
a boy a good education," he said, a hundred times. "Make a gentleman of
him, and you have done your duty by him."

"Make a gentleman of him--and the world will be glad to feed and clothe
him," was the real thought in his mind, as it was in the mind of
ne