These alterations were far advanced when the females re-appeared on deck. They at once attracted their attention, and the captain’s widow felt the imperative necessity, as connected with her professional character, of proving the same. She soon found Spike, who was bustling around the deck, now looking around to see that his brig was kept in the channel, now and then issuing an order to complete her disguise. “Captain Spike, what _can_ be the meaning of all these changes? The tamper of your vessel is so much altered that I declare I should not have known her!” “Is it, by George! Then, she is just in the state I want her to be in.” “But why have you done it—and what does it all mean?” “Oh, Molly’s going to bed for the night, and she’s only undressing herself—that’s all.” “Yes, Rosy dear, Captain Spike is right. I remember that my poor Mr. Budd used to talk about the Rose In Bloom having her clothes on, and her clothes off, just as if she was a born woman! But don’t you mean to navigate at all in the night, Captain Spike? Or will the brig navigate without sails?” “That’s it—she’s just as good in the dark, under one sort of canvas, as under another. So, Mr. Mulford, we’ll take a reef in that mainsail; it will bring it nearer to the size of our new foresail, and seem more ship-shape and Brister fashion—then I think she’ll do, as the night is getting to be rather darkish.” “Captain Spike,” said the boatswain, who had been sent to look-out for that particular change—“the brig begins to feel the new tide, and sets to windward.” “Let her go, then—now is as good a time as another. We’ve got to run the gantlet, and the sooner it is done the better.”