The Molly Swash was still under her canvas, though very little sufficed for her present purposes. She was directly off Whitestone, and was making easy stretches across the passage, or river, as it is called, having nothing set but her huge fore-and-aft mainsail and the jib. Under this sail she worked like a top, and Spike sometimes fancied she travelled too fast for his purposes, the night air having thickened the canvas as usual, until it “held the wind as a bottle holds water.” There was nothing in this, however, to attract the particular attention of the ship-master's widow, a sail, more or less, being connected with observation much too critical for her schooling, nice as the last had been. She was surprised to find the men stripping the brig forward, and converting her into a schooner. Nor was this done in a loose and slovenly manner, under favour of the obscurity. On the contrary, it was so well executed that it might have deceived even a seaman under a noon-day sun, provided the vessel were a mile or two distant. The manner in which the metamorphosis was made was as follows: the studding-sail booms had been taken off the topsail-yard, in order to shorten it to the eye, and the yard itself was swayed up about half-mast, to give it the appearance of a schooner's fore-yard. The brig's real lower yard was lowered on the bulwarks, while her royal yard was sent down altogether, and the topgallant-mast was lowered until the heel rested on the topsail yard, all of which, in the night, gave the gear forward very much the appearance of that of a fore-topsail schooner, instead of that of a half-rigged brig, as the craft really was. As the vessel carried a try-sail on her foremast, it answered very well, in the dark, to represent a schooner's foresail. Several other little dispositions of this nature were made, about which it might weary the uninitiated to read, but which will readily suggest themselves to the mind of a sailor.
These alterations were far advanced when the females re-appeared on deck. They at once attracted their attention, and the captain's widow felt the imperative necessity, as connected with her professional character, of proving the same. She soon found Spike, who was bustling around the deck, now looking around to see that his brig was kept in the channel, now and then issuing an order to complete her disguise.
“Captain Spike, what can be the meaning of all these changes? The tamper of your vessel is so much altered that I declare I should not have known her!”
“Is it, by George! Then she is just in the state I want her to be in.”
“But why have you done it—and what does it all mean?”
“Oh, Molly's going to bed for the night, and she's only undressing herself—that's all.”
“Yes, Rosy dear, Captain Spike is right. I remember that my poor Mr. Budd used to talk about The Rose In Bloom having her clothes on, and her clothes off, just as if she was a born woman! But do n't you mean to navigate at all in the night, Captain Spike? Or will the brig navigate without sails?”
“That's it—she's just as good in the dark, under one sort of canvas, as under another. So, Mr. Mulford, we'll take a reef in that mainsail; it will bring it nearer to the size of our new foresail, and seem more ship-shape and Brister fashion—then I think she'll do, as the night is getting to be rather darkish.”
“Captain Spike,” said the boatswain, who had been set to look-out for that particular change—“the brig begins to feel the new tide, and sets to windward.”
“Let her go, then—now is as good a time as another. We've got to run the gantlet, and the sooner it is done the better.”