Death On The Lizard by Robin Paige

Author:Robin Paige [Paige, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Robin Paige

CHAPTER TWENTY

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

Affecting a casual nonchalance, Andrew Kirk-Smyth cast off the mooring line on the sloop he had hired in Helford and pulled in the mainsheet. Wolf had pushed off the beach, clambered onto the prow of the Mistral II, and run up his jib. Now, he was tacking for the mouth of the little inlet. Kirk-Smythe did not want to let him get too far ahead, but he did not want to be seen as following tack-fortack, either—and anyway, he couldn’t. The hired sloop hadn’t near the speed of the larger yacht; it was built for weather, not for speed. So he luffed along until the Mistral rounded Dennis Head, sailing east toward the Helford River, then he tightened up on the jib and the main, put the helm down, and sailed as close to the wind as he could.

As Andrew sailed under Dennis’s high cliff, the faster, heavier yacht was well ahead of him. But a few moments later, it began to fall off, running downwind with the main and jib out, making for the mouth of the Helford. Andrew relaxed a little and began to enjoy himself. He didn’t have to sail hard now, for he knew where Wolf was bound, where he aimed to moor the Mistral. Frenchman’s Creek.

The early morning—it had just gone seven when they put out of Mullion Cove on the tail of the ebb and began the swing round Lizard Point—had been beautiful: a sharp blue sky over an aquamarine ocean, the water heaving in long, slow rolls, the surf beating against the rocks, the seabirds swooping overhead. As they passed Lizard light, which had stood stalwart against all gales for nearly three hundred years, the southerly breeze was fresh against Andrew’s right cheek, and the tiller of the little boat—sturdy, seaworthy, for all its small size—shivered and shuddered like a live thing under his hand. It was a moment of unrestrained, uncompromised, unmitigated pleasure. Whatever his reason for being there, Andrew was glad to be messing about in boats, as his father, a man with a deep love of the sea, had always put it.

But as they beat around Black Head and past the Manacles and then around Nare Point into Gillan Harbor, the clouds had begun to thicken and take on the color of lead. And now, having left the refuge of Gillan, Andrew was glad to be making the turn for Helford and a safer harbor, for the following wind was gaining strength, the waves were higher, and it looked like being rather dirty weather in a few hours. But the run downwind was easy, so he let out the sail, sat far back in the stern, and kept a firm hand on the helm, the prow riding high as the wind hard aft pushed the little sloop forward. This was her favorite point of sail,

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