a bag I carried. We dropped the anchor of the _Shining Light_,
and beat out, through the tickle, to the wide, menacing sea, with the
night coming down and a gale of wind blowing lustily up from the gray
northeast. 'Twas thus not in flight the _Shining Light_ continued her
cruise, 'twas in pursuit of the maid I loved: a thing infinitely more
anxious and momentous--a thing that meant more than life or death to
me, with the maid gone as cook on a Labrador craft. 'Twas sunset time;
but there was no sunset--no fire in the western sky: no glow or
effulgent glory or lurid threat. The whole world was gone a dreary
gray, with the blackness of night descending: a darkening zenith, a
gray horizon lined with cold, black cloud, a coast without tender
mercy for the ships of men, a black sea roughening in a rage to the
northeast blasts. 'Twas all hopeless and pitiless: an unfeeling sea,
but troubled, it seemed to me, by depths of woe and purpose and
difficulty we cannot understand. We were bound for Topmast Harbor, on
a wind favorable enough for courageous hearts; and my uncle had the
wheel, and the fool of Twist Tickle and I kept the deck to serve him.
He did not call upon us to shorten sail, in answer to the old
schooner's complaint; and I was glad that he did not, as was the fool
also....

* * * * *

'Twas night when we put into Topmast Harbor; but my uncle and the fool
and I awoke the place without regard for its way-harbor importance or
number of houses. There was no maid there, said they; there had been a
maid, come at dawn, but she was fortunately shipped, as she wished to
be. What maid was that? They did not know. Was she a slender,
tawny-haired, blue-eyed, most beauteous maid? They did but sleepily
stare. I found a man, awakened from sound slumber, who remembered: ay,
there was a maid of that description, who had shipped for cook on the
_Likely Lass_. And whence the _Likely Lass_? Bonavist' Bay, says he,
put in for rest: a seventy-tonner, put out on the favoring wind. And
was there another woman aboard? Ecod! he did not know: 'twas a craft
likely enough for any maid, other woman aboard or not. And so we set
out again, in the night, dodging the rocks of that tickle, by my
uncle's recollection, and presently found ourselves bound north, in
search of the _Likely Lass_, towards a sea that was bitter with cold
and dark and wind, aboard a schooner that was far past the labor of
dealing w