Their shirts ripped into hasty bandages, their bodies
glistening with sweat and rusty with their own or their foes' blood,
they were a bedraggled sight. Nevertheless, as they raised their arms
or flung their caps into the air, flinging after the pirates a few
last resounding epithets. Chris's heart swelled with emotion at the
men he was proud to call his friends.

As the gull, he swung up into the air away from the _Mirabelle_, and
began shaking the dust from the open pouch on the sea around the
_Vulture_. By the time the bag was empty, a mist impossible for any
helmsman to see through had surrounded the battered ship from stem to
stern, and in despite of a freshening wind, was rising steadily to the
top of its one remaining mast.

Chris returned to his own ship, and in his own shape at last, surveyed
the dwindling island of mist that clung persistently around the
Vulture, blow though the wind might, and turn and turn again though
the helmsman might try to do. How long, Chris wondered, would the mist
hold? Or would the _Vulture_ be doomed to drift at the mercy of the
sea in its magic white shroud?

He gave it a long look, a diminishing irregular white shape on the
vast spread of the ocean, then turned quickly and went to the decks
below to help his wounded friends. Yet not before he had seen that the
prow of the _Mirabelle_ was turned triumphantly home!

CHAPTER 35

Chris had always known, tucked away somewhere out of sight at the back
of his heart and his mind, that he loved his country and his city. But
he had never given it much thought; it had been something as taken for
granted as the air he breathed. So that he found himself overwhelmed
by the gust of emotion sweeping through him when he stood beside
Captain Blizzard as the _Mirabelle_ sailed slowly up the Potomac.

Chris stood there with Amos on his other side, looking at the shores
that were both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar when he saw Mount
Vernon on its imposing bluff; unfamiliar because no domes or obelisks
were to be seen; no airfield, and no Pentagon. But the sweet green
land itself was there, holding out its welcoming and individual scent
of fields and rich American soil.

However, the Georgetown Ned Cilley and Amos remembered, the little
town from which they had all sailed in secrecy and haste so many
months before, was there awaiting them. The noon sun was bright over
the few slate roofs and red brick chimneys, and Chris felt a cho