e, sending
down the royals in a gale like that; let alone a boy of fifteen year on
his first voyage.

But the mate takes to swearing (it would have turned a parson faint to
hear him), and Kent shoots away up,--the great mast swinging like a
pendulum to and fro, and the reef-points snapping, and the blocks
creaking, and the sails flapping to that extent as you wouldn't
consider possible unless you'd been before the mast yourself. It
reminded me of evil birds I've read of, that stun a man with their
wings; strike _you_ to the bottom, Tom, before you could say Jack
Robinson.

Kent stuck bravely as far as the cross-trees. There he slipped and
struggled and clung in the dark and noise awhile, then comes sliding
down the back-stay.

"I'm not afraid, sir," says he; "but I cannot do it."

For answer Whitmarsh takes to the rope's-end. So Kentucky is up again,
and slips and struggles and clings again, and then lays down again.

At this the men begin to grumble a little low.

"Will you kill the lad?" said I. I get a blow for my pains, that sends
me off my feet none too easy; and when I rub the stars out of my eyes
the boy is up again, and the mate behind him with the rope. Whitmarsh
stopped when he'd gone far enough. The lad climbed on. Once he looked
back. He never opened his lips; he just looked back. If I've seen him
once since, in my thinking, I've seen him twenty times,--up in the
shadow of the great gray wings, a looking back.

After that there was only a cry, and a splash, and the Madonna racing
along with the gale twelve knots. If it had been the whole crew
overboard, she could never have stopped for them that night.

"Well," said the cap'n, "you've done it now."

Whitmarsh turns his back.

By and by, when the wind fell, and the hurry was over, and I had the
time to think a steady thought, being in the morning watch, I seemed to
see the old lady in the gray bunnet setting by the fire. And the dog.
And the green rocking-chair. And the front door, with the boy walking in
on a sunny afternoon to take her by surprise.

Then I remember leaning over to look down, and wondering if the lad were
thinking of it too, and what had happened to him now, these two hours
back, and just about where he was, and how he liked his new quarters,
and many other strange and curious things.

And while I sat there thinking, the Sunday-morning stars cut through the
clouds, and the solemn Sunday-morning light began to break upon the se