“Yes,” she said finally and with no remonstrance, “yes, I do see it. I know that you must go.”
The Mistress Margeret was refitted from stem to stern that winter and the cargo in bales and boxes laid away within her hold. When the early Spring came, she lifted anchor, hoisted sail and swept out of Hopewell harbour, her prow turned to the far horizon and the other side of the world. She sailed short handed, for, bold as were the sailors of Hopewell, many of them hung back from such a venture. There were vague but terrible tales of what might happen to ships beyond the Cape of Good Hope, tales of furious hurricanes, of reefs and shoals in vast uncharted seas, and even of sea monsters.
“Let one ship go there and come back safe,” they said. “Let us hear that only ordinary storms and ordinary dangers will assail us on such a voyage and that by the Southern stars we can steer as straight a course as by our good Dipper and North Star. Then we will set sail with a right good will!”
So the voyage began with only a few bold-hearted seamen on board and with Gerald Radpath standing at the ship’s stern, watching, as far as he could see, the brave little figure on the hillside that waved good-bye as long as loving eyes could span that ever widening distance.
“We will not make his going hard, Stephen, by showing him our tears,” said Clotilde, at last, as she took up her boy in her arms and made her way with slow, dragging steps back to the house.
Would she ever, she wondered, stand there to watch come in the ship that now seemed sailing away for all time?
Almost from the moment that the Mistress Margeret sank below the horizon, Clotilde could see that the feeling toward Gerald was beginning to change.
“Your good husband, madam, Heaven send that he come back safe!” were words that she used to hear often as she went about the town.
“My grandfather began his fortunes as cabin boy to good Master Roger Bardwell,” said one of the housewives to her, “and I hope my son will sail some day with Master Radpath.”
And one old sailor, who had begged hard to go with Gerald but had been reluctantly left behind on account of his age and feebleness, said the best thing of all.
“I told ’em, mistress, many a time, that the lad had Simon Radpath’s blood in him and a good spirit of his own besides, and I said he would show it yet. Now the blind ones are beginning to see.”