Part 14 (1/2)

”Lay aft here with your men now, Horry. Tail on to those mainsheets.

All together! Get away on her so we can cast loose as soon as possible from that smoky scuttle b.u.t.t.”

He referred to the tug. He stepped aft to take the wheel himself.

The mainsail was going up smartly. The old boatswain and the Portygees swung upon the lines with vehemence. There was not more than a capful of wind; but once let the canvas fill, and the schooner would get steerageway.

”I'd rather take my chance through the channel under sail than depend on that tug,” the captain added. ”Like a puppy dragging around an old rubber boot. Lively there! Ready to cast off, Mr.

Chapin.”

The schooner was freed of the ”puffing abomination,” the smoke of which sooted the _Seamew's_ clean sails. The heavy hawser splashed overboard and the schooner staggered away rather drunkenly at first, tacking among the larger craft anch.o.r.ed out there in the harbor.

The wind was not a very helpful one and soon after midnight it fell almost calm. There were only light airs to urge the _Seamew_ on. Yet she glided through the starlit murk in a ghostly fas.h.i.+on as though some monstrous submarine hand forced her seaward.

The water chuckled and gurgled under her bow, flas.h.i.+ng in ripples now and then. There was no phosph.o.r.escence, no glitter or sparkle.

The schooner moved on as through a tideless sea. Now and then a clutter of spars or a suit of listless sails loomed up in the dark.

But even if the other craft likewise was tacking seaward, the _Seamew_ pa.s.sed it and dropped it behind.

Tunis paced the deck--Horry was at the wheel--and quite approved of the feat his schooner was performing.

”If she can sail like this on only a breath of wind, what can she do in a gale?” he said buoyantly in the old man's hearing.

”That's all right. She sails pretty. But I don't like that tug to sta'bo'd,” growled Horry. ”It 'minds me too much of the _Marlin B._”

Captain Latham gave no heed.

The sun stretched red beams from the horizon and took the _Seamew_, all dressed out at sunrise in her full suit of canvas, in his arms.

She danced as lightly over the whitecaps that had sprung up with the breeze at dawn as though she had not a ton of ballast in her hold.

Yet she was pretty well down to her Plimsoll mark.

The girl's first glimpse through the cabin window at sea and sky was a heartening one. If she had sought repose with doubt, uncertainty, and some fear weighing upon her spirit, this beautiful morning was one to revive her courage. She was fully dressed and prepared to go on deck when Tunis tapped at the slide.

”Miss Bostwick,” he called, ”any time you are ready the boy will come in and lay the table for breakfast.”

She ran to the companionway, pushed back the door, and appeared smiling in the frame of the doorway.

”Good morning, captain!”

Her cheerfulness was infectious. All night Tunis Latham, even while lying in his hammock in the forecastle, had been ruminating in anything but a cheerful mood. Determined as he was to carry his plan through, and confident as he was of its being a good one and eminently practical, he had been considering many chances which at first blush had not appeared to him.

With his first look into her smiling countenance all those anxieties seemed dissipated. He met her smile with one which transfigured his own handsome face.

”May I come out on deck, captain?”

”We shall be honored by your company up here, Miss Bostwick.”

She even made him a little face in secret for the formality of his address, as she flashed past him. There was a dancing light in her eye he had not seen before--at least, not in the openness of day.