r all her gentle ways, took the bit in her
teeth, it was too restricted for her there.

"Is there any law against my going up and holding on to the mast?" she
asked Cary.

"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
Running on and on till delayed
By the mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,
And towering high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,
Took the breath from our sails, and we stayed.

The soft, lingering voice threw the words at us with a thrill and a leap
forward, just us the Revenge was carrying us with long bounds, over the
shining sea. We were spinning easily now, under a steady light wind, and
Cary, his hand on the rudder, was opposite me. He turned with a start as
the girl began Tennyson's lines, and his shining dark eyes stared up at
her.

"Do you know that?" he said, forgetting the civil "Miss" in his
earnestness.

"Do I know it? Indeed I do!" cried Sally from