"You are going to have a fine day for your fishing, comrade."
"Yes, I think so, but maybe there will be more wind presently."
Some time before reaching the gunboat, Ryan had lain down and the nets were thrown loosely over him, as it would be better that there should not seem to be more than the two hands that were generally carried in the small fishing boats. Once out of the river they steered south, laying a course parallel to the shore and about a mile out. After an hour's sail Jules directed her head into a little bay, took out an empty basket that he had brought with him, and stepped ashore, after a cordial shake of the hand. He had already advised them to bear very gradually to the southwest, and had left a small compass on board for their guidance.
"They are things we don't often carry," he said, "in boats of this size; but it will be well for you to take it. If you were blown out of sight of land you would find it useful. Keep well out from the Spanish coast, at any rate until you are well past Bilbao; after that you can keep close in, if you like, for you will be taken for a fishing boat from one of the small villages.
"I shall walk straight back now to the town. No questions are asked at the gates and, if anyone did happen to take notice of me, they would suppose I had been round peddling fish at the farmhouses."
Coming along, he had given instructions to Terence as to sailing the boat. When running before the wind the sheet was to be loose, while it was to be tightened as much as might be necessary to make the sail stand just full, when the wind was on the beam or forward of it.
"You will understand," he said, "that when the wind is right ahead you cannot sail against it. You must then get the sail in as flat as you can, and sail as near as you can to the wind. Then when you have gone some distance you must bring her head round, till the sail goes over on the other side; and sail on that tack, and so make a zigzag course: but if the wind should come dead ahead, I think your best course would be to lower the sail and row against it. However, at present, with the wind from the east, you will be able to sail free on your proper course."
Then he pushed the boat off.
"You had better put an oar out and get her head round," he said, "before hoisting the sail again. Goodbye; bon voyage!"
Since leaving the river, Terence had been sailing under his instructions and, as soon as the boat was under way again he said to his companion:
"Here we are, free
men again, Dicky."
"I call it splendid, Terence. She goes along well. I only hope she will keep on like this till we get to Corunna or, better still, to the mouth of the Douro."
"We must not count our chickens before they are hatched, Dicky. There are storms and French privateers to be reckoned with. We are not out of the wood yet, by a long way. However, we need not bother about them, at present. It is quite enough that we have got a stout boat and a favouring wind."
"And plenty to eat and drink, Terence; don't forget that."
"No, that is a very important item, especially as we dare not land to buy anything, for some days."
"What rate are we going through the water, do you think?"
"Jules said we were sailing about four knots an hour when we were going down the river, and about three when we had turned south and pulled the sail in. I suppose we are about halfway between the two now, so we can count it as three knots and a half."
"That would make," Ryan said, after making the calculation, "eighty-four miles in twenty-four hours."
"Bravo, Dicky! I doubted whether your mental powers were equal to so difficult a calculation. Well, Jules said that it was about four hundred miles to Corunna, and about a hundred and fifty to Santander, beyond which he thought we could land safely at any village."
"Oh, let us stick to the boat as long as we can!" Ryan exclaimed.
"Certainly. I have no more desire to be tramping among those mountains and taking our chance with the peasants than you have, and if the wind keeps as it is now we should be at Corunna in something like five days. But that would be almost too much to hope for. So that it does but keep in its present direction till we are past Santander, I shall be very well satisfied."
The mountains of Navarre and Biscay were within sight from the time they had left the river, and it did not need the compass to show them which way they should steer. There were many fishing boats from Nivelle, Urumia, and Saint Sebastian to be seen, dotted over the sea on their left. They kept farther out than the majority of these, and did not pass any of them nearer than half a mile.
After steering for a couple of hours, Terence relinquished the oar to his companion.
"You must get accustomed to it, as well as I," he said, "for we must take it in turns, at night."
By twelve o'clock they were abreast of a town; which was, they had no doubt, San Sebastian. They were now some four miles from the Spanish coast. They were travelling at about the same rate as that at which they had started, but the wind came off the high land, and sometimes in such strong puffs that they had to loosen the sheet. The fisherman had shown them how to shorten sail by tying down the reef points and shifting the tack and, in the afternoon, the squalls came so heavily that they thought it best to lower the sail and reef it. Towards nightfall the wind had risen so much that they made for the land, and when darkness came on threw out the little grapnel the boat carried, a hundred yards or so from the shore, at a point where no village was visible. Here they were sheltered from the wind and, spreading out the nets to form a bed, they laid themselves down in the bottom of the boat, pulling the sail partly over them.