go far from the fire while it was being got ready. Then there was breakfast. Then they went all over the island again, but made no new discoveries. Then, while Mate Susan and Able-seaman Titty were busy in the camp, the captain and the boy sailed away to Holly Howe with the mails. The mails were only one letter, a very short one, but Titty had not thought of writing it until they were nearly ready to set sail. She would not have had time to write even so much, if it had not been that the wind was blowing rather harder after breakfast and Captain John decided to take a reef in the sail. While he was giving the boy a lesson in how to do it, Titty wrote her letter. Here it is:
“My darling Mother,
“We send our love from a desert island and hope you are very well. So are we.
“But mother was here yesterday,” said Captain John; “she won’t want letters today.”
“Well, I’ve written it anyway,” said Titty.
And so the Swallow carried mails when she sailed for Holly Howe.
The wind was really hard and she made a roaring passage of it, heeling over till the water nearly came in over the gunwale and crashing into the little waves so that buckets of water flew up and were driven in wet spray over the boy and the captain. With the wind from the northwest, they had to beat against it going up the lake to Holly Howe. The little Swallow rushed from one side of the lake to the other and back again, going about at the end of each tack with a shiver and flap of her brown sail, lying down to it as the sail filled and then picking herself up as she gathered speed again and rushed once more across the slapping waves.
On one tack John took her right into Houseboat Bay, close by the houseboat and out again. They went beyond the houseboat before going