"Not if you won't fall overboard, Miss," he answered.
The girl, with a strong, self-reliant jump, a jump that had an echo of tennis and golf and horseback, scrambled up and forward, Cary taking his alert eyes a moment from his sailing, to watch her to safety, I thought her pretty as a picture as she stood swaying with one arm around the mast, in her white shirt-waist and dark dress, her head bare, and brown, untidy hair blowing across the fresh color of her face, and into her clear hazel eyes.
"What is the name of this boat?" she demanded, and Cary's deep, gentle voice lifted the two words of his answer across the twenty feet between them.
"The Revenge" he said.
Then there was indeed joy. "The Revenge! The Revenge! I am sailing on the Revenge, with a man who knows Sir Richard Grenville and Amyas Leigh! Cousin Mary, listen to that—this is the Revenge we're on—this!" She hugged the mast, "And there are Spanish galleons, great three-deckers, with yawning tiers of guns, all around us! You may not see them, but they are here! They are ghosts, but they are here! There is the great San Philip, hanging over us like a cloud, and we are—we are—Oh, I don't know who we are, but we're in the fight, the most beautiful fight in history!" She began to quote:
And half of their fleet to the right, and half to the left were seen,
And the little Revenge ran on through the long sea-lane between.
And then:
Thousands of their sailors looked down from the decks and laughed;
Thousands of their soldiers made mock at the mad little craft