CHAPTER IX

MERRIL TIGHTENS THE SCREW

The _Sorata_ went to sea again next morning, and one night a week later she bore up for Vancouver before a westerly breeze. A thin crescent moon had just cleared the dim white line of the mainland snow, and the sea glittered faintly in her frothing wake under a vast sweep of dusky blue. The big topsail swayed across it, blotting out the stars, and there was a rhythmic splashing beneath the bows.

Anthea Merril stood at the tiller outlined against the heave of sea, for the night was warm and she was dressed in white. Nellie Austerly sat on a locker in the cockpit, and her father on the saloon skylights with a cigar in his hand. Valentine lay on the deck not far away, and Jimmy a little further forward.

"I suppose we will be in soon after daylight, and I'm sorry," said Nellie Austerly. "It has been an almost perfect cruise in spite of the bad weather. Don't you wish we were going back again, instead of home, Anthea?"

Jimmy roused himself to attention, for he would very much have liked to hear Miss Merril's real thoughts on the matter; but she laughed.

"I don't think it would be very much use if I did," she said. "One can't go sailing always--and if you feel that that is a pity, you can think of the rain and the wind."

"Ah!" said Nellie Austerly, "one has to bear so much of them everywhere. Sometimes one wonders whether life is all gray days and rain; but this trip has made me better, and, perhaps, if Mr. Valentine will take us, we will go back next year and revel once more in the sea and the sunshine--we really had a good deal of the latter."

1. What was Anthea wearing?
2. who else was on the boat?
3. what was she doing?
4. what was the boat named?
5. Did Nellie want to go home?
6. what time of day is it?
7. what's the weather like?
8. was the moon full?
9. what shape was it?
10. What was Nellie's father doing?
11. Who was laying on the deck?
12. What has the trip done for Nellie?
13. when does she want to do it again?
14. who would take them?

Numbered answers:
1. white
2. Nellie Austerly
3. Sitting on a locker
4. The _Sorata_
5. No.
6. Night
7. warm
8. No.
9. A thin crescen
10. sitting on the saloon skylights
11. Valentine
12. made her better,
13. next year
14. Mr. Valentine