"Out to sea, then, while we may!" she cried. "Oh, Mitsos, it is a fine thing to be in the hand of God and all His saints! But what if the Turks slip by us?"
"There will be rocks and big waves for the Turks," said Mitsos, laconically. "Hoist jib and staysail; she cannot stand more than that. Where are Kanaris and the Sophia?"
"Kanaris is as wise as we, and will get sea-room for himself," said the Capsina. "There, that is done. Come back to supper, little Mitsos."
Mitsos looked round again.
"I think not yet," he said; "but go you down. I will stop here till there is a spoonful or two more water between us and land."
"I am with you," said the girl, and they began pacing up and down the deck together.
Night fell like a stroke of a black wing feathered with storm-cloud. As a sponge with one wet sweep will wipe out the writing from a slate, so that black cloud in the water sucked the light from the sky, and the wind screamed ever higher and more madly. Once again the angry fire licked out and was gone, and the thunder clapped a more immediate applause, and with that they were the centre of an infinite blackness. Land, sea, and sky were swallowed up and confounded in one terrific tumult of unseen uproar. Fast as the brig scudded before the storm, the waves seemed ever to be going the faster, as if to reach some terrible rendezvous where they would wait for her. In Mitsos's mind the present fear was that the wind would veer, as so often happens on those inland seas, and before they were sufficiently far from land would be forcing them back on to the lee shore. Then he knew there would be before them a night's work of battling with the wind that yelled in exultation as it took them back, of losing ground inevitably, and of desperately fighting every inch until the storm blew itself out.
Half an hour passed and they were still running out to sea, when, suddenly, the wind shifted westward, and the ship for a moment trembled and shook as if she had struck a rock. The two men at the tiller knew their work, and in a moment had the struggling tiller jammed down, and the Revenge checked like a horse, and again slowly made way on the starboard tack.
And at the sight of the obedience of the ship, more like some intelligent beast than a thing of wood, a great thrill of pleasure struck the Capsina. "Well done!" she cried. "Well done, dear ship!"
Then the sky above them burst in a blaze of violet light, and Mitsos, in that flash, though half-blinded, saw two things—the one a ship, some two miles distant, as far as he could judge in that glance, and straight before their bows on the troubled and streaky sea, the other a great gray column rising like a ghost from the waves, not more than four hundred yards away, and which was the more dangerous, he knew.