Anne laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, I don't know. I know something of the British and French Navies, but patriotism—the sort of spirit you speak of—has always appeared to me such an abstract thing as regards America. It's because, I suppose, I have never known anything about it, because I have been more or less of an expatriate all my life."
Jack had been watching a display of Ardois lights from the Jefferson's mast. He turned away, but spoke over his shoulder.
"Don't be that, Miss Wellington, for you have proved to me that a girl or a child, reared as you have been, can be American in every instinct and action. I had never believed that."
He hurried away to the bridge rail and Anne's arm turned red under the impress of Sara's fingers.
In compliance with the Jefferson's signals, the engines of the flotilla began to throb and the boats turned to the eastward.
A cry came from the D'Estang's lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel—her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible—was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept through the flotilla like ether waves.
Armitage let a good Anglo-Saxon objurgation slip from his tongue as he turned toward the yeoman.
"Half speed!"
"Half speed, sir," answered the yeoman as he tugged at the engine room telegraph.