“Mister!”
“Sir?”
“Stand by to square away your main yard! I think we’ll get a breeze afore two bells.”
He walked the poop fore and aft, rubbing his hands and whistling a little tune.
There was a scamper of bare feet on the planking. Men sang out as they hauled on the braces, “Yo-heu-yoi-hee!” Blocks sang shrill as fifes, reef points beat a tattoo on the tautened canvas. The sails filled with loud clappings. Out of the north-east came the wind—shattering the calm mirror of the sea into a million splinters—filling the royals like the cheeks of the trumpeting angels of the Judgment—burying under its mounded confusion the very memory of the vanished calm, even as the years lay mounded over the dead face of Conchita, whom the gods loved too well....
“We’ll beat that bloody ‘Alcazar’ yet, mister,” said Captain Fareweather.
SEATTLE SAM SIGNS ON
“IT’S what I’m always tellin’ you, Mike,” said Captain Bascomb severely, “you’re too rough with ’em.”