'It is all you will need,' said Mr. Pollak, 'and I am sure everyone must pray that God will bless and prosper your noble voyage.'
I took the worthy Dutchman's hand and thanked him with a silent grip.
At that moment the windlass began to clank; immediately a hoarse voice bawled out a song whose burthen was caught and flung in thunder into the air by the seven or eight hearts who bowed and rose at the windlass handles.
'Come, Mr. Pollak; come, colonel,' I exclaimed; 'there's time for a bumper.'
I called to the captain to send aft the lad who was to wait upon us in the cabin, and descended with my friends. A magnum of champagne was opened, and we filled and drank to the voyage. I obliged Captain Cliffe to come down and drink. He cried through the skylight that he durst not leave the deck for above three minutes; I told him to come, and the two gentlemen toasted the little man, who delivered, with several grimaces, a brief sailorly speech, full of hope, then rushed on deck.
I bade Mr. Pollak good-bye with a full heart. The colonel followed him into the boat, which put off, and then hung by on her oars to watch us. At this time the anchor was off the ground, and the crew were making sail on the brig, whose bowsprit, with a white pinion of jib swelling from it, was rounding, finger-like, in a slow, pointing way for the open; the sheep-faced mate stood on the forecastle shouting orders; a sailor was at the wheel; Captain Cliffe crossed the deck from left to right, looking up and around, moving swiftly, a doll of a man, grimacing and blinking at every pause in his nimble trot.
Some of the ships round about had got our tale, I fancy, or at least the scent of our errand; since from most of them we were watched by many heads above the rail. Presently the brig's stern was to the wind, her topsails filled, the lighter sails glanced wing-shaped to the yard-arms to the drag of the gear; I waved my hat from the quarter to my two friends, and they flourished a last farewell. My voyage, strange as any that had ever been undertaken in this world, was begun!
We were the only ship at that time leaving the Bay, and I think our lonely going must have given a certain majesty and nobleness to the figure of the vessel in the eyes of those who watched us, with the significance of her dangerous, surprising, romantic mission going along with her. I don't know what my own sensations were: I was sensible perhaps of a little triumph of spirits at this getting away so quickly, and then there was the feeling that I was in action, that no time was being lost; and yet there was a heaviness at my heart too, the chill of doubt, a frosty dread that the errand would prove profitless, and that if God suffered me to return home it must be as a mourner for Marie.