Accordingly
he had Carthew aft, explained what was to be done with anxious patience,
and visited along with him the various sheets and braces.

"I hope I'll remember," said Carthew. "It seems awfully muddled."

"It's the rottenest kind of rig," the captain admitted: "all blooming
pocket handkerchiefs! And not one sailor-man on deck! Ah, if she'd only
been a brigantine, now! But it's lucky the passage is so plain; there's
no manoeuvring to mention. We get under way before the wind, and run
right so till we begin to get foul of the island; then we haul our wind
and lie as near south-east as may be till we're on that line; 'bout ship
there and stand straight out on the port tack. Catch the idea?"

"Yes, I see the idea," replied Carthew, rather dismally, and the two
incompetents studied for a long time in silence the complicated gear
above their heads.

But the time came when these rehearsals must be put in practice. The
sails were lowered, and all hands heaved the anchor short. The whaleboat
was then cut adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the yards
braced up, and the spanker sheet hauled out to starboard.

"Heave away on your anchor, Mr. Carthew."

"Anchor's gone, sir."

"Set jibs."

It was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. Wicks, his head full of
a schooner's mainsail, turned his mind to the spanker. First he hauled
in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result.

"Brail the damned thing up!" he bawled at last, with a red face. "There
ain't no sense in it."

It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had
no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind.
The laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in
a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable
result of any action, equally concealed from him. He was the more
careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assistants. He stood
there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb; and
indeed, now the ship was under weigh, supposed his difficulties over.

The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to
walk the water like a thing of life, her forefoot discoursing music, the
birds flying and crying over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to
open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef;
bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to
heave closer aboard. T