Mara's heart beat fast when the boat touched the shore, and Moses and one or two other young men came to assist in their landing. Never had he looked more beautiful than at this moment, when flushed with excitement and satisfaction he stood on the shore, his straw hat off, and his black curls blowing in the sea-breeze. He looked at Sally with a look of frank admiration as she stood there dropping her long black lashes over her bright cheeks, and coquettishly looking out from under them, but she stepped forward with a little energy of movement, and took the offered hand of Tom Hiers, who was gazing at her too with undisguised rapture, and Moses, stepping into the boat, helped Mrs. Pennel on shore, and then took Mara on his arm, looking her over as he did so with a glance far less assured and direct than he had given to Sally.
"You won't be afraid to climb the ladders, Mara?" said he.
"Not if you help me," she said.
Sally and Tom Hiers had already walked on toward the vessel, she ostentatiously chatting and laughing with him. Moses's brow clouded a little, and Mara noticed it. Moses thought he did not care for Sally; he knew that the little hand that was now lying on his arm was the one he wanted, and yet he felt vexed when he saw Sally walk off triumphantly with another. It was the dog-in-the-manger feeling which possesses coquettes of both sexes. Sally, on all former occasions, had shown a marked preference for him, and professed supreme indifference to Tom Hiers.
"It's all well enough," he said to himself, and he helped Mara up the ladders with the greatest deference and tenderness. "This little woman is worth ten such girls as Sally, if one only could get her heart. Here we are on our ship, Mara," he said, as he lifted her over the last barrier and set her down on the deck. "Look over there, do you see Eagle Island? Did you dream when we used to go over there and spend the day that you ever would be on my ship, as you are to-day? You won't be afraid, will you, when the ship starts?"
"I am too much of a sea-girl to fear on anything that sails in water," said Mara with enthusiasm. "What a splendid ship! how nicely it all looks!"
"Come, let me take you over it," said Moses, "and show you my cabin."
Meanwhile the graceful little vessel was the subject of various comments by the crowd of spectators below, and the clatter of workmen's hammers busy in some of the last preparations could yet be heard like a shower of hail-stones under her.
"I hope the ways are well greased," said old Captain Eldritch. "'Member how the John Peters stuck in her ways for want of their being greased?"
"Don't you remember the Grand Turk, that keeled over five minutes after she was launched?" said the quavering voice of Miss Ruey; "there was jist such a company of thoughtless young creatures aboard as there is now."