Zeb showed no hesitation. He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders.

"Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail
and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was
ever in in my life," he said.

"She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd,"
muttered Horry.

"Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't
any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the _Seamew_.
"But it's got to be done. Come! Will you risk it with me?"

They looked aloft and then at each other. There was little save
reflection in their several glances. Men of this caliber do not
hesitate over a risk of life or ship. Cautious as Tunis Latham was,
his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt
fulfillment of the details of the pact. Nor did the prospect of the
rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was
not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the _Seamew_
should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there
was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The
breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a
real gale. And they knew that a gale was coming.

This was no place for a schooner of the _Seamew's_ size to ride out
the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the
Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the
trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better
chance.

CHAPTER XXXI

BITTER WATERS

Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her
New England ancestry if not of her father's Celtic blood, had
brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pass. One might have said, if
one were hardened enough, that had the young woman "possessed an
ounce of sense" she would not have made herself penniless, an
outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from
an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain.

She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the
real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead. And those hours of
torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila's soul.

She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief
interview with her. Had she not shut herself away from him--refused
to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the
_Seamew_--she must have broken down, given way to that womanly
weakness