"Very smartly done. The old man must have shipped a good crew. Wonder where he got 'em? That's the way Yankee ships used to make sail when I was a boy."
David felt a thrill of pride as if he had a personal share in this welcome praise. The liner was overhauling the Sea Witch hand over hand. David was straining his eyes to make out the flutter of a skirt on the quarter-deck. The ship was still too far away, however, and his attention was caught for a moment by the surprised voice of the bos'n:
"Holy schmokes, your granddaddy is gettin' up his sky-sails. He vill give us a race, eh?"
Sure enough, the sailors of the Sea Witch could be seen working in mid-air, and presently the tiny squares of canvas gleamed above her royals. "It is to show this old tea-kettle what a Yankee ship can do," quoth the bos'n.
No more stately and beautiful sea picture could be imagined than the Sea Witch, when Captain Bracewell had put her under this staggering press of sail. The wind was humming through the stays of the Roanoke's apologies for masts, and it smote the Sea Witch with a driving power, which heeled her until the copper of her hull gleamed like a belt of gold against the white-capped Atlantic.
David could see Margaret leaning against the weather rail of the poop, her hair blowing in the jolly wind, as she shaded her eyes and gazed at the liner's decks. Nor could this daughter of the deep sea have asked for a more fitting accompaniment for her farewell to David than the roaring chorus which floated from amidships of the Sea Witch. Captain Bracewell had bullied and bribed the shipping masters of New York to find him Yankee seamen. It was a hard task that he set them, but by hook and crook he had gathered a dozen deep-water "shell-backs" of the old breed among his thirty foremast hands, and they knew the old-time sailors' chanties. Now, as they swayed and hauled on sheets and braces, their lusty chorus came faint and clear to the liner:
"Come all ye young fellows that follow the sea,
With a yeo, ho, blow the man down,
And pray pay attention and listen to me,
Oh, give me some time to blow the man down."