ning over
with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working
across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the
splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of
the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors;
the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over
thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of
everything at the day's end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under
the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and
Harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook.

But the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel together, Tom
Platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down to the crashing
blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching unbroken over her
windlass. Then the jaws of the booms whined against the masts, and the
sheets creaked, and the sails filled with roaring; and when she slid
into a hollow she trampled like a woman tripped in her own silk dress,
and came out, her jib wet half-way up, yearning and peering for the
tall twin-lights of Thatcher's Island.

They left the cold gray of the Bank sea, saw the lumber-ships making
for Quebec by the Straits of St. Lawrence, with the Jersey salt-brigs
from Spain and Sicily; found a friendly northeaster off Artimon Bank
that drove them within view of the East light of Sable Island,--a sight
Disko did not linger over,--and stayed with them past Western and Le
Have, to the northern fringe of George's. From there they picked up the
deeper water, and let her go merrily.

"Hattie's pulling on the string," Dan confided to Harvey. "Hattie an'
Ma. Next Sunday you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the windows to
make ye go to sleep. 'Guess you'll keep with us till your folks come.
Do you know the best of gettin' ashore again?"

"Hot bath?" said Harvey. His eyebrows were all white with dried spray.

"That's good, but a night-shirt's better. I've been dreamin' o'
night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. Ye can wiggle your toes
then. Ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. It's home, Harve.
It's home! Ye can sense it in the air. We're runnin' into the aidge of
a hot wave naow, an' I can smell the bayberries. Wonder if we'll get in
fer supper. Port a trifle."

The hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep
smoothed out, blue and oily, round them. When they whistled for a wind
only the rain came