“Get her aboard?” said Satan. “Oh, I’ll durn soon get her aboard. Davits! God love you! what do you want them things for?”
“Except for hoistin’ fools off the ship?” said the voice of Jude from the darkness. “Air you goin’ to get a move on? You’ve got the old awning to take in and stow. Maybe you’ve forgotten it.”
They got the awning down and stowed, and then, against a train of fire crawling on the eastern sea-line and in a light that made the world like the vestibule of Fairyland, Satan set to on the problem of the dinghy. He had no doubt half a dozen dodges for the purpose. The one he employed was simply to unshackle the main halyards and fix them to the ring-bolt on the bow.
As they hauled on the tackle, and as if in answer to the creak of block and shrill chantey started by Satan, the races of the gulls blazed out. The deep-sea fishing gulls had long since started for sea; but the shore gulls, as though waiting for a convoy to follow, were round the stern of the Sarah. Then, the dinghy secured, the throat and peak halyards were manned, and the mainsail rose slatting against the splendor of the morning.
The sun was over the sea-line now, the wind rising to meet him, and to starboard the fresh blue sea flooding against the wind showed the Natchez, her canvas rising and the fellows swarming at the ropes.
Satan had unlashed the wheel and was standing by it, now that the mainsail was set, shouting directions to his crew; and to Ratcliffe, as he labored with Jude getting the foresail and jib on her, the truth came in a flash that this was the real thing. The lazy peace of the last couple of days had broken all at once. Activity, Adventure, and Danger seemed suddenly to have boarded the old Sarah Tyler and delivered her as a prey to enormous and unknown forces.
He had never recognized till now the potential energy of canvas. The mainsail seemed horribly vast, out of all proportion to the hull; the slatting of the jib as they raised it spoke of an energy new born, viewless, and seeming to have little relationship to the warm and benign breeze.
But he had no time to think. The anchor was still to be had in, and as he helped with Jude at the windlass—Pap’s patent that would have raised a battleship—the threshing of the canvas with all sheets slack and the voice of Satan came urging speed.
Then, when the old killick was aboard and the sails trimmed, came Peace. With the wind on the starboard beam and the canvas hard against the blue the Sarah settled down to her work, Palm Island fading to westward, and to sou’west the Natchez with all sail set in pursuit.
Jude’s bad temper seemed to have blown away on the wind, the surly look had gone from her face, and as she stood for a moment by Ratcliffe, looking over the weather rail, her mind seemed entirely occupied by Cleary.