“Unless I mistake,” said Cornbury, coolly, “I have no choice in the matter. The walking is but poor, and I’ve no humor for a swim. My dear man, ye may rest your mind on that--ye’re a madman--of that I’m assured. But I’ll stay with ye awhile.” CHAPTER IX “BRAS-DE-FER” And so for the present it was settled. Monsieur Mornay sought rest vainly, and crept upon deck at the first flashing of the sun upon the horizon. The _Sally_, dressed in a full suit of cloths upon both her masts, went courtesying upon her course with a fine show of white about her bows and under her counter. The brig was not inaptly named, for there was an impudence in the rake of her masts and in the way she wore her canvas which belied her reputation for a sober and honest-dealing merchantman. There was a suggestion of archness, too, in the way her slender stem curved away from the caresses of the leaping foam which danced rosy and warm with the dawn to give her greeting, and a touch of gallantry in the tosses and swayings of her prow and head as they nodded up and down, the very soul of careless coquetry. But now and then an opalescent sea, more venturesome and intrepid than his fellows, would catch her full in the bluff of the bows and go a-flying over her forecastle in a shower of spume and water-drops, which in the golden light turned into jewels of many hues and went flying across the deck to be carried down to the cool, translucent deeps under her lee. But she shook herself free with a disdainful, sweeping toss and set her broad bows out towards the open, where the colors were ever growing deeper and the winds more rude and boisterous, as though she recked not how impetuous the buffets of the storm, how turbulent the caresses of the sea.