-side all dark and big--her
mainmast is as high as our church steeple, you know--and I was just
looking up at her and wondering where the watchman was, when four men
came along down the wharf. I thought perhaps 'twas Father and some of
his men. When they were quite close that biggest one, Herriot, stepped
up to me and before I could shout he put his hand over my mouth and held
me. They gagged me fast and then one of them gave a whistle, long and
low. Pretty soon a boat came up to the dock and they grabbed me and put
me in, spite of all I could do. They paddled along to another wharf and
took aboard some more men and then started to row out as fast as they
could. I guess those boats that came after us were from Father's ship.
He must have missed me right away. So now old Bonnet or Thomas or
whatever his name is thinks he's going to get a fat sum out of me.
That's all of my story, so far. But there'll be another chapter yet!"
Jeremy, for both their sakes, sincerely hoped that there might.

At sunset of that day the _Royal James_ cleared Cape Henlopen and held
her course for the open sea, while behind her in the gathering dusk the
coast grew hazy--faded out--was gone. The two boys, sitting late into
the first watch, shivered with that fine ecstasy of adventure that can
come only in the shadowy mystery of star-lit decks and the long,
whispering ripple of a following sea.

Jeremy, who twenty-four hours before had thought of the ship as a place
of utter desolation, would not now have changed places with any boy
alive. He knew, perhaps for the first time, the fulness of joy that
comes into life with human companionship. That night two lads at least
had golden dreams of a youthful kind. Ducats and doubloons, princesses
and plum-cake, swords awave and cannon blazing, great galleons with
crimson sails--no wonder that they were smiling in their sleep when
George Dunkin held a lantern over the bunk at the change of the watch.

CHAPTER XIV

The day came in dark with fog, which changed a little after noon to
driving scud. The wind had gone around to the northeast and freshened
steadily, driving the waves in from the sea in steep gray hills, quite
different from anything Jeremy had before experienced. The sloop, under
three reefs and a storm jib, began to make rough weather of it,
staggering up and down the long slopes in an aimless, dizzy fashion that
made Jeremy and Bob very unhappy. The poor young New Englander had to
p