ail-loosers! Trice up! Lay out! Loose away!"
Almost at the instant came down the squeaks from aloft of, "All ready
with the fore! the main! the mizzen!" "Let fall--sheet home! hoist away
the top-sails!"

Again were heard the quick notes of the fifes on both decks, and in less
than five minutes more the anchors were catted, and the "Monongahela,"
under a cloud of canvas, began to move.

But where was the "Rosalie," late "Perdita," all this time? Why, there
she goes, with never a tack, through the narrow strait, lying over under
the press of her white dimity like a witch on a black broomstick, as she
shoots out to sea.

And who is that tall man, on that narrow deck, clapping on to sheet and
tackle, though there was no need of assistance, or skill, or seamanship
to be displayed on board that craft, except by way of love of the thing?
And why does he, during a pause when there was nothing more that could
possibly be done, stand by the weather rail, shaking a great huge old
seaman by both hands till he almost jarred the schooner to her
keel?--Ben Brown, the helmsman, whom you have heard of on board the
"Martha Blunt," who, by some accidental word he dropped near to the tall
gentleman, caused that hand-grasping collision.

It was not another five minutes before the other thirty-nine old
sea-dogs knew all about every body, and where they were bound, and so
on. They did not care a brass button for the thousand silver dollars
they were to have from the tall gentleman--not they! They wanted merely
to lay their eyes along that Long Tom amidships, and to have a cutlass
flashing over their shoulders--so fashion! Pistols and pikes! Fudge!

But where was the "Martha Blunt?" Oh, that old teak brig was bouncing
along past Morant Point, with a good slant from the southward, pretty
much where she was some seventeen years before, with a few more
passengers in her deck cabin, reading their Bibles, and praying for
those who go down to the sea in ships on that Sabbath day--one looking
with her sad eyes out of the stern windows, and another doing the same,
and both thinking of the same boy who had been dashed out of one of
those windows; and though both of them knew the other's thoughts, yet
they did not dream they were thinking of the same person at the time.

And where was the Spanish brigantine, with the exacting _capitano_--who
was a slaver in dull times--and his pleasant mate, who would think no
more of sticking a knife into you tha