CHAPTER XXIX
TWENTY-ONE
Next morning, a half-hour before sunup, the long-boat with the skipper, Ben, Sally, and Spanish Dick, Benson the bo'sun, Jack Beam, and Zeke Yeo, and tents, provisions, and a stock of tools, left the North Star and stole out between the Twin Horn Capes. No life was yet visible on the deck of the black yacht.
Feeling perhaps that rigid ship's discipline must be relaxed on such a mad expedition, the old bo'sun remarked in a cautious voice to the skipper:
"You didn't congratulate me on my birthday, Captain. If there was an election in this latitude and longitude, I'd cast my first ballot today. I've just come of age," he finished with a smirk that would have been a fit piece of business for his execution of that ridiculous hornpipe the day before, or the old rascal's waggish recital of "I'm to be Queen of the May, Mother, I'm to be Queen of the May."
Then they bent to the oars right gallantly and skirted the white lime-stone cliffs of the western shore, under a sky as pink as a wild-rose on the hedge by the roadside, in late June.
The black-eyed sprite forward, laughed joyously as the
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