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.

When I looked up I caught the clew of Jenks' eye, but the rest were
looking at the rapidly approaching ship.

XVIII

When the _Pirate_ neared us, we could make out a man coming down the
ratlines from the foretop, showing that she had evidently sighted us even
before we had her. As she drew nearer still, we could see Trunnell
standing on the weather side of the poop, holding to a backstay and
gazing aloft at his canvas, evidently giving orders for the watch to bear
a hand and lay aft to the braces. He would lay his mainyards aback and
heave her to. Along the high topgallant rail could be seen faces, and on
the quarter-deck Mrs. Sackett stood with our friend Thompson, better
known in the Antipodes as Jackwell, the burglar. As I watched him
standing there pointing to us, I thought of poor Jim.

"Wheel down," I heard Trunnell bawl as the ship came within fifty fathom.
"Slack away that lee brace; steady your wheel."

Before the ship's headway had slackened we had out the oars and were
rowing for her. In a moment a sailor had flung us a line, and we were
towing along at the mizzen channels, with the men climbing aboard as fast
as they could.

Miss Sackett was passed over the rail, and her moth