CHAPTER XVIII
THE GYPSY OF THE SEA
"But, Señorita, I see them."
"With your own eyes, Dick?" questioned Sally from the knightheads.
"Yes, with these eyes. By San Juan el Moro I swear eet!"
"That makes thirty-eight fairy stories and thirty-eight saints, and we've only been out nine days."
She shook her head sceptically, then gazed up at the giant yardarms that dipped and rose with the ship's roll, then in spite of herself turned to listen again.
I have often wished that a painter, even slow old Queer Hat, had been there to transfix line and colour forever on some canvas,—the girl against the knightheads, a knot of scarlet at her throat, the spray glistening on her black lashes and unfettered hair; those trousers, crosslegged on the deck below her, a Whistlerish nocturne in azures and greys and greens; the brass earrings swaying as he talked; the crimson and yellow bandanna; and the wrinkled leather of the face looking up at her, with visions of lands and seas far beyond that ship.
No cloud above, the only white the gulls in their wake, and
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