But once free, their suspense was not prolonged.
Cresswell bore quickly down upon them, and picked them up; and rarely did three friends breathe more freely than when they all stood once more on the floor of their boat.
There was no speech-making or wringing of hands, no bragging, no compliments.

They knew one another too well for that, and dressed in silence, much as if the adventure had been an ordinary incident of an ordinary bathe.
"It strikes me," said Cresswell, who still had the oars out, "it will take us all our time to get back.

Are you ready to take an oar, old man ?" Short as the time had been--indeed the whole incident had not occupied much more than five minutes--the boat was about a mile below her old moorings, and still in the rush of the current.
It was little the two rowers could do to keep her head up, much less to make any way; and finally it became clear that if they were to get back to Templeton at all that day, they must either anchor where they were, for six hours, with the risk of their rope not holding in the Race, or else let the current take them out to the open, and then make a long row back outside the Sprit, and clear of the Fiddle Bank.
They decided on the latter, and somewhat gloomily rested on their oars, and watched the backward sweep of the boat on the tide seaward.
The square tower of Templeton had become a mere speck on the coast-line, before they felt the tide under them relax, and knew they were out of the Race.
Then they manned their oars, and began their long pull home.
Fortunately the water still remained quiet, and the breeze did not freshen.

But after about a mile had been made, and the Sprit Rock seemed only midway between them and the shore, a peril still more serious overtook them.

The sky became overcast, and a sea mist, springing from nowhere, came down on the breeze, blotting out first the horizon, then the rock, and finally the coast, and leaving them virtually blindfolded in mid-ocean.
"We may as well anchor, and wait till it clears," said Cresswell.
"I think we might go on slowly," said Freckleton.