noon
Before six he had her ready for sea , his dunnage bag aboard , grub in the lockers , gas in the tanks , clearance from the customhouse . He slept aboard in a bunk softer than many a sleeping place that had fallen to his lot in France . And at sunrise the outgoing tide bore him swiftly through the Narrows and spewed him out on the broad bosom of the Gulf of Georgia , all ruffled by a stiff breeze that heeled the little yawl and sent her scudding like a gray gull when Thompson laid her west , a half north , to clear Roger Curtis Point . He blew through Welcome Pass at noon on the forefront of a rising gale , with the sun peeping furtively through cracks in a gathering cloudbank . As the wind freshened , the manes of the white horses curled higher and whiter . Thompson tied in his last reef in the lee of a point midway of the Pass . Once clear of it the marching surges lifted the yawl and bore her racing forward , and when the crest passed she would drop into a green hollow like a bird to its nest , to lift and race and sink deep in the trough again .