THE STORM AND WHAT CAME OF IT IT was nearly three weeks after their landing that the Dawn Treader was towed out of Narrowhaven harbour. Very solemn farewells had been spoken and a great crowd had assembled to see her departure. There had been cheers, and tears too, when Caspian made his last speech to the Lone Islanders and parted from the Duke and his family, but as the ship, her purple sail still flapping idly, drew further from the shore, and the sound of Caspians trumpet from the poop came fainter across the water, everyone became silent.
Then she came into the wind. The sail swelled out, the tug cast off and began rowing back, the first real wave ran up uhe Dawn Treaders prow, and she was a live ship again. The men off duty went below, Drinian took the first wat the poop, and she turned her head eastward round the south of Avra.
The few days were delightful. Lucy thought she was the most fortunate girl in the world; as she woke each m to see the refles of the sunlit water dang on the ceiling of her and looked round on all the niew things she had got in the Lone Islands - seaboots and buskins and cloaks and jerkins and scarves. And then she would go on ded take a look from the forecastle at a sea which was a brighter blue each m and drink in an air that was a little warmer day by day. After that came breakfast and su appetite as one only has at sea.
She spent a good deal of time sitting otle ben the stern playing chess with Reepicheep. It was amusing to see him lifting the pieces, which were far too big for him, with both paws and standing on tiptoes if he made a move he tre of the board.
He was a good player and when he remembered what he was doing he usually won. But every now and then Lucy won because the Mouse did something quite ridiculous like sending a knight into the danger of a queen and castle bihis happened because he had momentarily fotten it was a game of chess and was thinking of a real battle and making the knight do what he would certainly have done in its place. For his mind was full of forlorn hopes, death-lory charges, and last stands.
But this pleasant time did not last. There came an evening when Lucy, gazing idly astern at the long furrow or wake they were leaving behind them, saw a great rack of clouds building itself up in the west with amazing speed.
Then a gap was torn in it and a yellow su poured through the gap. All the waves behind them seemed to take on unusual shapes and the sea was a drab or yellowish colour like dirty vas. The air grew cold. The ship seemed to move uneasily as if she felt danger behihe sail would be flat and limp one minute and wildly the . While she was noting these things and w at a sinister ge which had e over the very he wind, Drinian cried, "All hands on deck." In a moment everyone became frantically busy. The hatches wet battened down, the galley fire ut out, me aloft to reef the sail. Before they had fihe storm struck them. It seemed to Lucy that a great valley in the sea opened just before their bows, and they rushed down in it, deeper down than she would have believed possible. A great grey hill of water, far higher than the mast, rushed to meet them; it looked certaih but they were tossed to the top of it. Then the ship seemed to spin round. A cataract of water poured over the deck; the poop and forecastle were like two islands with a fierce sea between them. aloft the sailors were lying out al