“Guess there ain't no doubt about our makin' it!”
“Doubt your uncle!” roared the Captain. And he winked at his young admirer.
“Guess Mr. Roche didn't like the looks of it.”
“Guess not.”
Harper crept forward again. And Smiley, with a laugh in his eye, squared his chest to the storm, and thought of the necklace stowed away in the cabin; and then he thought of her who was to be its owner day after to-morrow, and “I wonder if we will make it,” thought he; “I wonder!”
And make it they did. Sliding gayly up into a humming southwest wind, with every rag up and the sheets hauled home, with the bluest of skies above them and the bluest of water beneath (for the Lakes play at April weather all around the calendar), Wednesday afternoon found them turning Grosse Pointe.
The bright new paint was prematurely old now, the small boat was missing from the stern davits, the cabin windows had been crushed in, and one sailor carried his arm in a sling, but they had made it. Harper, hollow-eyed, but merry, had the wheel; Smiley was below, snatching his first nap in forty-eight hours, with the red corals under his head.
“Ole,” called Harper, “wake up the Cap'n, will you? I can't leave the wheel. He said we was to call him off Grosse Pointe.”
So Ole called him, and was soon followed back on deck by another hollow-eyed figure.
“Guess it's just as well Mr. Roche didn't come along,” observed the boy, as he relinquished the wheel. “He'd'a' had all he wanted, and no mistake.”