on deck
again about his business. Otherwise our hero and the young lady were
left to themselves, to do as they pleased, with no one to interfere with
them.

As for her, she at no time showed any great sign of terror or of fear,
only for a little while was singularly numb and quiet, as though dazed
with what had happened to her. Indeed, methinks that wild beast, her
grandfather, had so crushed her spirit by his tyranny and his violence
that nothing that happened to her might seem sharp and keen, as it does
to others of an ordinary sort.

But this was only at first, for afterward her face began to grow
singularly clear, as with a white light, and she would sit quite still,
permitting Barnaby to gaze, I know not how long, into her eyes, her face
so transfigured and her lips smiling, and they, as it were, neither
of them breathing, but hearing, as in another far-distant place, the
outlandish jargon of the crew talking together in the warm, bright
sunlight, or the sound of creaking block and tackle as they hauled upon
the sheets.

Is it, then, any wonder that Barnaby True could never remember whether
such a voyage as this was long or short?

It was as though they might have sailed so upon that wonderful voyage
forever. You may guess how amazed was Barnaby True when, coming upon
deck one morning, he found the brigantine riding upon an even keel,
at anchor off Staten Island, a small village on the shore, and the
well-known roofs and chimneys of New York town in plain sight across the
water.

'Twas the last place in the world he had expected to see.

And, indeed, it did seem strange to lie there alongside Staten Island
all that day, with New York town so nigh at hand and yet so impossible
to reach. For whether he desired to escape or no, Barnaby True could not
but observe that both he and the young lady were so closely watched that
they might as well have been prisoners, tied hand and foot and laid in
the hold, so far as any hope of getting away was concerned.

All that day there was a deal of mysterious coming and going aboard
the brigantine, and in the afternoon a sailboat went up to the town,
carrying the captain, and a great load covered over with a tarpaulin in
the stern. What was so taken up to the town Barnaby did not then guess,
but the boat did not return again till about sundown.

For the sun was just dropping below the water when the captain came
aboard once more and, finding Barnaby on deck, bade him come