CHAPTER IX
"BRAS-DE-FER"
AND so for the present it was settled. Monsieur Mornay sought rest vainly, and crept upon deck at the first flashing of the sun upon the horizon. The Sally, dressed in a full suit of cloths upon both her masts, went courtesying upon her course with a fine show of white about her bows and under her counter. The brig was not inaptly named, for there was an impudence in the rake of her masts and in the way she wore her canvas which belied her reputation for a sober and honest-dealing merchantman. There was a suggestion of archness, too, in the way her slender stem curved away from the caresses of the leaping foam which danced rosy and warm with the dawn to give her greeting, and a touch of gallantry in the tosses and swayings of her prow and head as they nodded up and down, the very soul of careless coquetry. But
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