With so many hands the work went fast, and late that evening the crazy craft was launched.  It was necessary to handle her gingerly, and when she took the water she leaked abominably.  But during the night she swelled and in the morning it was possible to bail her out.

O’Reilly had to acknowledge himself but poorly pleased with the boat.  Branch called her a coffin and declared it was suicide to venture to sea in her, an opinion shared by the Cubans, but the girls were enchanted.  To them this fragile bark looked stout and worthy; they were in a fever to be gone.

On the second afternoon the trade-wind died to a gentle zephyr, so the cocoanuts and other food were quickly put aboard, a bed of bows was rigged beneath the rawhide forecastle and Esteban was laid upon it.  Then adieux were said and a start was made.

From the point of leaving it was perhaps five miles across the sound to the fringe of keys which in this neighborhood bordered the old Bahama Channel with its unplumbed depths of blue water.  Here it was calm, so the run was soon made.  The boat handled well enough, all things considered; nevertheless, to O’Reilly, her navigator, it was an anxious hour.  Not only was he forced to keep a sharp lookout for blockading gunboats, but he feared he was doing wrong in committing his precious freight to the uncertainties of the Atlantic.  Even had he been alone, with a crew of able sailors under him, this voyage would have daunted him, for it was without doubt the wildest adventure in which he had ever participated.  When he hinted at these fears and put the matter before his companions for a final test, Branch refused to speak, but Esteban and the girls were earnestly in favor of pushing on.  Jacket, of course, loudly seconded them.

At sunset they entered a pass and ran between low mangrove banks.  The tide was ebbing and it hurried them through and out into the open sea, where they felt the lift of the mighty ocean swell.  Over these slow undulations the sailboat plowed, heading toward the empty northern horizon, with the kindling Pole Star as a beacon.  The sky was clear, the sea was gently roughened by the night breeze, the constellations grew bright and appeared to hang low.

When the coast-line of Cuba had become a blur astern Rosa crept back and seated herself beside her husband.

“I breathe freely for the first time since that day when Don Mario came to offer me marriage,” she told him.  “The past is beginning to seem like a bad, bad dream and I feel a great hope, a great gladness.  I am reborn, O’Rail-ye.”

“A few hours more and we can all breathe easy.”  He smiled down at her.  She laid her small palm over his fingers which grasped the steering-oar, whereupon he cried with pretended sternness:  “Avast there!  Don’t distract the attention of the skipper or he’ll sail his boat in circles.  Look out or he’ll send you below.”

Rosa persisted mutinously, so he punished her with a kiss planted fairly upon her pouting lips, whereupon she nestled closer to him.  “How much I love you,” she whispered.  “But I never can tell you, for we are never alone.  Was there ever such a courtship, such a marriage, and such a wedding journey as ours?”