We have no longer a cross sea, and can show a little more sail to keep her from being pooped.

We will bear a little off toward the land--we must keep it in sight, and not too far on our left, otherwise we may miss the straits and run on to Jura." A little more sail was accordingly shown to the gale, and the boat scudded along at increased speed.
"How far is it to Colonsay ?" Archie asked.
"Between fifty and sixty miles from Rathlin," the fisherman said.
"It was eight o'clock when we started, ten when the squall struck us, it will be dark by four, and fast as we are running we shall scarcely be in time to catch the last gleam of day.

Come, boys," he said to his sons, "give her a little more canvas still, for it is life and death to reach Colonsay before nightfall, for if we miss it we shall be dashed on to the Mull long before morning." A little more sail was accordingly shown, and the boat tore through the water at what seemed to Archie to be tremendous speed; but she was shipping but little water now, for though the great waves as they neared her stern seemed over and over again to Archie as if they would break upon her and send her instantly to the bottom, the stout boat always lifted lightly upon them until he at length felt free from apprehension on that score.

Presently the fisherman pointed out a dark mass over their other bow.
"That is Jura," he said; "we are fair for the channel, lads, but you must take in the sail again to the smallest rag, for the wind will blow through the gap between the islands with a force fit to tear the mast out of her." Through the rest of his life Archie Forbes regarded that passage between Islay and Jura as the most tremendous peril he had ever encountered.

Strong as the wind had been before, it was as nothing to the force with which it swept down the strait--the height of the waves was prodigious, and the boat, as it passed over the crest of a wave, seemed to plunge down a very abyss.