The captain came out on deck and closed the slide.  The commercial tug was puffing in toward the Seamew’s berth.

“Come alive, boys!” said Captain Latham, taking instant command of the deck.  “Cast off those lines!  Get that tug hawser inboard, Horry.  Mr. Chapin, will you see that those lines are coiled down properly?  Keep the deck shipshape.  Make less work for your watch when we get under canvas.

“Lay aft here with your men now, Horry.  Tail on to those mainsheets.  All together!  Get away on her so we can cast loose as soon as possible from that smoky scuttle butt.”

He referred to the tug.  He stepped aft to take the wheel himself.  The mainsail was going up smartly.  The old boatswain and the Portygees swung upon the lines with vehemence.  There was not more than a capful of wind; but once let the canvas fill, and the schooner would get steerageway.

“I’d rather take my chance through the channel under sail than depend on that tug,” the captain added.  “Like a puppy dragging around an old rubber boot.  Lively there!  Ready to cast off, Mr. Chapin.”

The schooner was freed of the “puffing abomination,” the smoke of which sooted the Seamew’s clean sails.  The heavy hawser splashed overboard and the schooner staggered away rather drunkenly at first, tacking among the larger craft anchored out there in the harbor.

The wind was not a very helpful one and soon after midnight it fell almost calm.  There were only light airs to urge the Seamew on.  Yet she glided through the starlit murk in a ghostly fashion as though some monstrous submarine hand forced her seaward.

The water chuckled and gurgled under her bow, flashing in ripples now and then.  There was no phosphorescence, no glitter or sparkle.  The schooner moved on as through a tideless sea.  Now and then a clutter of spars or a suit of listless sails loomed up in the dark.  But even if the other craft likewise was tacking seaward, the Seamew passed it and dropped it behind.

Tunis paced the deck—­Horry was at the wheel—­and quite approved of the feat his schooner was performing.

“If she can sail like this on only a breath of wind, what can she do in a gale?” he said buoyantly in the old man’s hearing.

“That’s all right.  She sails pretty.  But I don’t like that tug to sta’bo’d,” growled Horry.  “It ’minds me too much of the Marlin B.”

Captain Latham gave no heed.

The sun stretched red beams from the horizon and took the Seamew, all dressed out at sunrise in her full suit of canvas, in his arms.  She danced as lightly over the whitecaps that had sprung up with the breeze at dawn as though she had not a ton of ballast in her hold.  Yet she was pretty well down to her Plimsoll mark.

The girl’s first glimpse through the cabin window at sea and sky was a heartening one.  If she had sought repose with doubt, uncertainty, and some fear weighing upon her spirit, this beautiful morning was one to revive her courage.  She was fully dressed and prepared to go on deck when Tunis tapped at the slide.