"Steady, there!" I cried. "Where's the vessel?"
"Right ahead, sir, and standing down this ways, if I see straight."
I stood up on the stern locker and looked ahead. Sure enough, a white speck showed on the northern horizon, but I couldn't see enough of the craft's sails to tell which way she headed.
The men all wanted to stand at once, and it took some sharp talk to get them under control; but the young girl at my side showed no signs of excitement. I looked at her, and her gentle eyes looked straight into mine.
"I knew she would come," she said. "I've prayed all the morning."
In twenty minutes, spent anxiously watching her, the ship raised her topsails slowly above the line of blue, and then we saw she really was jammed on the wind and reaching along toward us rapidly.
"'Tis the Pirit, an' no mistake!" cried the carpenter. "Look at them r'yals! No one but th' bit av a mate, Trunnell, iver mastheaded a yard like that."
"The Pirate!" yelled Johnson, from forward.
And so, indeed, it really was.
I looked at her and then at the sweet face at my side. All the hard lines of suffering and fright had left it. The eyes now had the same gentle, trusting look of innocence I had seen the first morning we had taken off the Sovereign's crew. The reaction was too much for me. I was little more than a boy in years, so I reached for the girl's hand and kissed it.