At that moment the ship _Gold Finder_, of Boston, Winthrop and
Hunniwell, owners, Sears Kendrick, master, was sailing out over the
waters of Massachusetts Bay. Astern, a diamond point against the
darkening sky, Minot's Light shone. The vessel was heeling slightly in
the crisp evening wind, her full, rounded sails rustling overhead, her
cordage creaking, foam at her forefoot and her wake stretching backward
toward the land she was leaving. Her skipper stood aft by the binnacle,
feeling, with a joy quite indescribable, the lift of the deck beneath
him and the rush of the breeze across his face.
From the open door of the galley lamplight streamed. Within Judah Cahoon
sang as he worked over the stove. Judah had had a glorious afternoon.
His chanteys had cast off the hawsers, had walked away with the ropes,
had hoisted the sails, had bade the tug good-by. Now his voice was a
thought frayed, but he sang on.
Elizabeth--now Elizabeth Berry no more forever--came up the companion
ladder. She joined her husband by the after rail. The sea air was chill
and she was wearing one of the captain's pea jackets, the collar turned
up; a feathery strand of her brown hair blew out to leeward. She stood
beside him. The man at the wheel was looking down into the binnacle and
Sears took her hand.
"Well?" he said, after a moment.
She looked up at him. "Well?" she said.
Neither spoke immediately. Then Kendrick breathed a sigh, a sigh
expressive of many things.
She understood. As always she knew what he was thinking.
"Yes," she said, "it is glorious. Glorious for me; but for you,
Sears----"
"Yes. It's pretty fine. I really never expected to make sail out of
Boston harbor again. And if anybody had told me that I was to--" with
another look at the helmsman, and lowering his voice--"to leave port
this way--with you----"
He laughed aloud.
She laughed, too. "And just think," she said; "no more little worries or
pettinesses, no more whispers, or faultfinding, or----"
"Or Fair Harbors. You're right, my girl. We're off, clean away from it
all, bound out."
From the galley Judah's voice came, beginning the second verse of his
song,
"'Aloft! Aloft!' our jolly bos'n cries.
Blow high! blow low! and so sailed we.
'Look ahead, look astern, look a-weather and a-lee,
Look along down the coast of the High Bar-ba-ree.'
"'There's none upon the starn, there's none upon the lee.'
Blow high! blow low! and so sailed we.
'There's a lofty ship to wind'ard a-sailin' fast and free,
Sailin' down along the coast of the High Bar-ba-ree.'"
THE END
* * * * * *
NOVELS FOR CHEERFUL ENTERTAINMENT
GALUSHA THE MAGNIFICENT
By Joseph C. Lincoln
Author of "Shavings," "The Portygee," etc.
The whole family will laugh over this deliriously humorous novel, that
pictures the sunny side of small-town life, and contains love-making, a
dash of mystery, an epidemic of spook-chasing--and laughable, lovable
Galusha.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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