"An augury...!" said Applebo. "I like that. It cheers me up." And he called to the Finn to take the wheel while he prepared some macaroons and tea. Well clear of Cape Cod, the yawl got her first taste of what was coming, when Applebo was greatly reassured at her splendid behaviour. Luckily, the tide had turned and was running with the sea, which had lengthened out and, though of dismaying size, appeared to be kindly disposed. A landsman and many deep-sea sailors would have said that every moment was fraught with great peril for the little _Daffodil_, but Applebo and the Finn were of that species of human amphibian which lives in the closest and most intimate association with the sea--the offshore, small-boat sailor. Such know the sea as none other. The big-ship mariner knows it only as a sailor, but he who goes down to the deep in the little shallop knows it as does the gull; knows each flaw of the breeze as it strikes up from the flank of some mammoth surge; knows the cross-slap of a brimming wave and the upward throw as it mounts to comb. The day lightened. Suddenly the sun blazed out again to reveal the wind-torn waste as a seething cauldron. The spouting billows leaped to flash their jewelled tiaras in the vivid brilliance of the streaming light. Storm gulls wheeled and wove and darted and screamed their greetings to the day. Petrels darted like swallows. The ocean grew joyous in a wild and lawless abandon, leaping with drunken frenzy, the billows playing like titan creatures of the deep, flashing and flinging their silvery scales, and their shoutings arose in a revel of hoarse clamours that might have been song or curse. Through this wild carouse drove the _Daffodil_, and seemed to enjoy her rough handling by these sea-runners, as some buxom wench might take pleasure in a romp with rough sailormen. The wind roared more westerly and cocked aslant the white bonnets of the staggering seas. Spindrift, glittering like gems strewn with a wanton hand, flew clean to the truck of the little yawl, and a rainbow blazed and faded and blazed again under her plunging bows. Brighter grew the sun and harder blew the wind, while back rolled the grey blanket of the storm and showed a patch of sky blue and purple and amethyst, still fringed about with a ragged veil. The sea suggested snow falling on a field of sapphires. Now, the yawl wallowed in a maelstrom of mad water, while the day grew more and more glorious. All in an hour's time. Applebo had taken the wheel again, and the Finn was crouched at the foot of the mainmast. He had taken the end of a halliard and caught a turn around his body and the spar, for several times the little vessel had been swept by the heavy crest of a comber. Applebo was at times sitting in water waist-deep.