He caught the smile hidden behind the words and smiled himself. And for the first time since the night at the Crooked Billet the bitter wind that blew between them died completely down; he placed her chair for her, and drew his own toward it; and he talked to her in a new tone, with confidence and spirit; she sat and listened, and the hands which were folded in her lap trembled ever so little, and her eyes were even brighter than before.
XL
The Roebuck let go her moorings in the gray of the July morning; one of the boats towed her out of the run and into the river; then under mainsail, topsail, and jibs she pointed her nose downstream on the tedious journey to the capes. The tide ran out strongly, and the wind favored the vessel's progress; she had dropped the city behind by sun-up, the flats went by, and she picked up the towns on the river-bank one by one. The bay opened out late in the afternoon; the mate marked the lights of Lewes well into the night; and by morning they were at sea, under full sail and headed directly east.
The mulatto proved a good cook, and the breakfast he brought into the main cabin was excellent and plentiful. There was a large cut of Westphalia ham upon a broad platter, hot, candied, and delicious; there was a dish of rice like a hillock of snow, ship's biscuit, and steaming chocolate in a tall, slim pot.
"We are to be well fed, at all events," said Anthony, as he sat to the breakfast, with satisfaction. Mademoiselle and Tom Horn had been seated before he came in, and the clerk had a chart, marked in red and blue and black ink, upon the table between them. "The schooner is pointed due east," said Anthony. "Corkery tells me those were your directions."
"East, on the inner skirt of the circle until we reach the Azores," said Tom Horn, pointing to the characters on his chart and following them with a finger. "Then south to the Sargasso."
Mademoiselle, as she followed the tracing finger, bent forward; and, as it stopped at the region where lay the sea of grass, she saw its place was marked by a widening circle of skulls. She shivered a little and drew back.
"With the wind holding," said Anthony, "We should raise the Azores in two weeks."
"We must cling to the inner rim of the circle," said Tom Horn, still with his finger on the chart, "for all things carried by the current drift toward its center; the moon and the running tides and the turning of the world draw them. And we must follow the circle to the place where it begins to bend to the south; the hulk we seek may have been delayed in its passage, for no man knows what the sea will do, and no one can judge the mysteries of the wind."