The top spars of the _Bess_ had been slung while we were ashore, and by
this time we had also knocked away the ugly and hindering false work on
bow and stern, so that with her lifting foreyards which would have done
for a sloop-of-war, and on her driving fore and aft sails which could
have served the mizzen of a two-thousand-ton bark, the _Bess_ was now
herself again. And she had need to be for the work before her.
Captain Blaise ordered her foresails brailed in to the mast to windward
and her foreyards braced flat, this that she might sail closer to the
wind.
Entering the narrow passage, she was held to the edge of the low but
steep bank to windward; so close that where the low-lying reeds grew
outward we could hear them swishing against her sides as we passed on.
Miss Cunningham, having seen her father comfortably established with
Ubbo in the cabin, had come on deck, and Captain Blaise, busy though he
was, took time to make her welcome. No need for him to boast of his
seamanship--the whole coast could tell her that; but how often had a
beautiful girl a chance to see the proof of it?
We followed the curve of the river's bank almost as the running stream
itself. When we came to a sharp-jutting point, Captain Blaise himself,
or me to the wheel, would let her fall away until her jib-boom lay over
the opposite bank; and then, her sails well filled, it was shoot her up
into the wind and past the point before us.
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