Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/324

296 money in that man's pocket—he don't deserve it. Ye wouldn't ask me if ye knowed. Tain't like ye, girl, tain't like ye. Ask me anything else—I can't do that. What's more, I dun' know't I could find her now. She may 'a heeled over, tides may 'a shifted her, she may 'a settled deeper, somebody may 'a run over her and broke off the topm'st."

"Cap'n Tass," she said, pleading, as for her life. "Cap'n Tass, remember your old messmate. Do ye think John Grale would have let his pride stand in the way, if you were in deadly peril and he could save you by any means? Are you going to send me back to him to see him going day by day, till one day we'll miss him, and God knows what we'll find!" She shuddered and wrung her hands. "Oh, Cap'n Tass, you won't, you can't!"

He stood up before her, rubbed his forehead thoughtfully a minute, then threw his handkerchief into his cap and put it on tight. There was settled purpose in his face and gesture.

"God forgive me!" he said. "I didn't look at it so. Poor Jack! Poor Jack! We'll save him yet. Kit, you an' me—we'll save him yet. There's no time to spare. We'll go now. It is low water at four fifteen. We'll need our time. Go down to the Bess, Kit, an' wait for me."

He went over to the house where he was staying. Kit unfurled the Bess's sail, run it up and set it taut. Then Marlin came down with a jug of water and a brown-paper parcel, a shawl and a couple of coats over his arm. He stowed them under the deck, forward, threw off the line. The boat drifted off, swayed round before the wind.

"Take the tiller, Kit," he said. "This is your cruise. You're Cap'n, I'm only pilot."

The wind had hauled into the south-east, still veering southward. The clouds had cleared away, the sun shone bright and warm. The breeze was fresh, the boat filled away before it, went bowling down the harbor with the wind on her starboard quarter. The green hills dropped behind—dark woods, houses here and there, projecting points and little shaded coves. Kit steered—old Tass trimmed sheet.

No trouble in the inlet now, wind and tide astern. Kit sees the light on the bar, the long reach of water stretching away toward home. She wonders how things are getting on there. The worrying thought frets her sorely.

"Let her stan' close for Goose Neck P'int, Kit," says Tass, and trims the sheet a little closer.

On, across the broad bay, breezily now along the shore of the point; then the Neck drops behind; they are clear of the land. The boat rises and falls on the tumbling waves of the open Sound.

"Luff, Kit, luff a little: There—stiddy—keep her so," says Marlin. "Run your eye along the line o' the keel. Ye see that white spire on the north shore—east of the little village—on the hill, with the woods behind it? Keep her nose to that meetin'-house."

The wind veered steadily round through the southern quarter, blowing fresh and steady. On went the Bess before it, crowding ahead dancingly, making way swiftly, drawing the northern shore on nearer and plainer.

They ran in to within a couple of miles of the shore; the wind very nearly west, the sky clear.

"Hard a-port!" called Marlin, then. "Let her go about."

The boom swayed over, Tass slipped the sheet.