Kentucky sprang for’ard at the order, then stopped short.  Anybody as knows a royal from an anchor wouldn’t have blamed the lad.  I’ll take oath to’t it’s no play for an old tar, stout and full in size, sending down the royals in a gale like that; let alone a boy of fifteen year on his first voyage.

But the mate takes to swearing (it would have turned a parson faint to hear him), and Kent shoots away up,—­the great mast swinging like a pendulum to and fro, and the reef-points snapping, and the blocks creaking, and the sails flapping to that extent as you wouldn’t consider possible unless you’d been before the mast yourself.  It reminded me of evil birds I’ve read of, that stun a man with their wings; strike you to the bottom, Tom, before you could say Jack Robinson.

Kent stuck bravely as far as the cross-trees.  There he slipped and struggled and clung in the dark and noise awhile, then comes sliding down the back-stay.

“I’m not afraid, sir,” says he; “but I cannot do it.”

For answer Whitmarsh takes to the rope’s-end.  So Kentucky is up again, and slips and struggles and clings again, and then lays down again.

At this the men begin to grumble a little low.

“Will you kill the lad?” said I. I get a blow for my pains, that sends me off my feet none too easy; and when I rub the stars out of my eyes the boy is up again, and the mate behind him with the rope.  Whitmarsh stopped when he’d gone far enough.  The lad climbed on.  Once he looked back.  He never opened his lips; he just looked back.  If I’ve seen him once since, in my thinking, I’ve seen him twenty times,—­up in the shadow of the great gray wings, a looking back.

After that there was only a cry, and a splash, and the Madonna racing along with the gale twelve knots.  If it had been the whole crew overboard, she could never have stopped for them that night.

“Well,” said the cap’n, “you’ve done it now.”

Whitmarsh turns his back.

By and by, when the wind fell, and the hurry was over, and I had the time to think a steady thought, being in the morning watch, I seemed to see the old lady in the gray bunnet setting by the fire.  And the dog.  And the green rocking-chair.  And the front door, with the boy walking in on a sunny afternoon to take her by surprise.

Then I remember leaning over to look down, and wondering if the lad were thinking of it too, and what had happened to him now, these two hours back, and just about where he was, and how he liked his new quarters, and many other strange and curious things.

And while I sat there thinking, the Sunday-morning stars cut through the clouds, and the solemn Sunday-morning light began to break upon the sea.

We had a quiet run of it, after that, into port, where we lay about a couple of months or so, trading off for a fair stock of palm-oil, ivory, and hides.  The days were hot and purple and still.  We hadn’t what you might call a blow, if I recollect accurate, till we rounded the Cape again, heading for home.