overhaul us. No, nothing that ever leaped the belted trades can hold her
now, not the _Bess_--while her gear's sound and she's all the wind she
craves for."

"I believe you, Captain." She looked over the roaring side. Long and
loose and lean, she was lengthening out like a quarter-horse, and he
was singing, but with a puzzling savageness of tone:

"Roll, you hunted slaver
Roll your battened hatches down--"

"Good-night, Captain." She turned to me. She was pale, but 'twas the
pallor of enduring bravery. There was no paling of her dark eyes. Even
darker were they now. "Good-night--" She hesitated. "Good-night, Guy."

"Good-night, Miss Shiela," and I handed her down the companion-way. At
the foot of the stairs she looked up and whispered, "You must take care
of that wound, Guy." And I answered, "No fear," and then her face seemed
to melt away in a mist under the cabin lamp.

Astern of us the dawn leaped up. It had been black night; in a moment,
almost, it was light again. I remembered what Captain Blaise had said of
a sunset in Jamaica; but here it was the other way about--a purple,
round-rimmed dish, and from a segment of it the blood-red salad of a sun
upleaping. And pictured clouds rolling up above the blood-red. And
against the splashes of the sun the tall palm-trees. And in the new
light the signal flambeaux paling. And the white spray of the bar
tossing high, and across the spray the white-belted squadron tacking and
filling futilely.