At nine o'clock of the morning of the twenty-second day of June, the bow of the Heart of the West was towed around and pointed down-stream by willing boats and canoes; a light wind filled such sails as were set, and the voyage was begun. Trigget fired a salute from a new gun which Kingswell had given him from the armament of the ship. It was answered by the barking of cannon and the fluttering of sails.

Ouenwa stood with Mistress Westleigh, Kingswell, and Maggie Stone, aft by the tiller, which was in the hands of Tom Bent. The lad was fairly wild with excitement. Now, it seemed to him, his great dreams were assured; and yet a pang of homesickness went through the joy like the blade of a knife, as he watched the faces of the clustered people along the meadow and in the boats grow dim,—the faces of William Trigget and Black Feather, and of a dozen more who were dear to him. He shouted back to them in English and in his native tongue, and waved his cap frantically. The faces blurred and wavered. The ship swam around the wooded point, and meadow and stockade and camp of wigwams vanished like a picture withdrawn. The lad turned and glanced at Mistress Westleigh. Then he walked forward to the break of the poop, and blinked very hard at nothing in particular in the belly of the maintopsail.

Soon the wooded banks fell away on either side, and the water changed its tint of amber for wind-roughened green. The gray, purple, and brown shores of the roadstead widened and dropped lower, and azure uplands shone beyond their frowning brows. The wind freshened, and white flakes of foam whipped from crest to crest across the ever-shifting, ever-vanishing valleys of green. Along the fading cliffs white sea-birds circled and settled like flakes of snow. A few great gulls winged around the ship, fleeing to leeward like bolts of mist, and beating up again with quivering pinions.

Kingswell had taken the duties of sailing-master upon himself. He was as good a deep-sea navigator as any man on the whole width of the North Atlantic. When the outer bay was reached, yards were swung around, and the stout bark headed due east at his orders. To see old Tom Bent push the tiller over, and other seasoned mariners man brace and sheet, at the command of that gold-haired youth, made the heart of Beatrix Westleigh flutter with pride. Her dark eyes, already bright and lovely beyond power of description, shone yet more brightly; and her cheeks, already flushed to clear flame by the wind, deepened their glow. As the ship answered to his will, so would he answer to her whim. It was a pleasant reflection to the lady; and to realize it she called softly. Without a glance at the straining sails, he turned and hastened to her side.

The voyage from Fort Beatrix to the wonderful harbour and brave little town of St. John's was made without accident, though not without incident. In Bonavista Bay, at a gray hour of the morning, the stump of a great iceberg was narrowly avoided. A day later, a large vessel that was evidently employed at fishing evinced an undesirable interest in the business of the Heart of the West. She was not a quarter of a mile distant when first sighted, for a light fog was on the water. She flew no flag, and changed her course and altered her speed with sinister promptness. Kingswell, and every man of the ship's company, knew that pirates of many nationalities infested those waters during summer. The worst of the thieves were Turks; and the fishing-ship or store-ship that was overhauled by those gentry usually lost more than its cargo. Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Spaniards also had a weakness for playing the part of the bald eagle, with their heavy metalled and wide-sailed craft, to the rÔle of the fishhawk so unwillingly played by the merchantmen. Happily for Kingswell's command, the stranger was inshore and to leeward. Both watches were piped up by Tom Bent. The gunners went to their quarters. Sail after sail unfurled about the already straining masts and yards. The brave little ship answered willingly to the pressure, and her cutwater broke the flanks of the waves into sibilant foam.

A rumour of the chase reached Mistress Beatrix and her old maid, in the seclusion of that snug cabin in which Master Trowley was, at one time, wont to revel. Maggie Stone drew the curtains across the thick glass of the after-port (as if fearing that the eagle glance of one of the pirates might pierce the privacy of her retreat), and then devoted herself to tearful prayer. Beatrix completed her toilet, threw a cloak over her shoulders, and climbed the companion. She joined Kingswell by the tiller, and, after saluting him tenderly and with a composure that took no heed of the sailor at the helm, watched the chase with interest.

"They outsail us," she said, presently.

Kingswell nodded. "But she'll never get near us on that course," he replied. "She is for heading us off, and getting to windward. If she gets to windward of us—Lord, but I scarce think she will."

He said a word of preparation to the man at the tiller, and then gave a few quick orders from the break of the poop. In half a minute the Heart of the West headed out on an easy tack. When every sail was drawing to his liking, he returned to the girl.

"How glorious!" she cried. "A good horse, a singing pack, and an old fox make but slow sport compared to this."

"We are the fox on this hunting morning," smiled Kingswell.

"With teeth," she hinted.

He noticed that the unwelcome stranger was shouldering the wind on the new course. He looked at the girl.

"Ay, we have teeth, sweeting," he said, "and soon we'll be gnashing them."

Though the Heart of the West sailed well, to windward, the big craft astern sailed even better. The ships, crowded with canvas, the dancing blue water and cloudless sky, and the brown and azure coast to leeward, made a fine picture under the white sun. As the stranger drew near and nearer, excitement increased aboard the merchantman. Old Trowley bawled to be set free, that he might not die in the sail-locker like a rat in a hole. Tom Bent spat on his hard hands, and pulled his belt an inch shorter. Ouenwa lugged up shot and powder, and was for opening fire at an impossible range. Beatrix roused Maggie Stone from her devotions, and took her forward to a place of greater safety in the men's quarters.

Along either side of the after-cabin of the Heart of the West ran a narrow passage. Each passage ended in a blind port, and behind each port crouched a gun of unusual size for so peaceful an appearing ship. Now Kingswell blessed the day that a youthful love of warlike gear and a heart for adventure had led him to add these pieces to the armament of his ship. He remembered, with a contented smile, how Master Trowley had growled at the delay caused by getting the great guns aboard and partitioning off the passage. Even his mother had urged him to put more faith in the great ship which the king was so gracious as to send to Newfounde Land each spring, as a convoy to the fishing fleet. But Master Bernard, spoiled child, had had his way; and now he thanked the gods of war for it.

Both ships sailed as close to the wind as their models and rigging and the laws of nature would allow. They went about often on ever shortening tacks. The hunter outsailed the hunted, though it is safe to say that her seamanship was no better. Suddenly she luffed until her sails quivered, and from her bows broke two puffs of smoke with inner cores of flame. Both shots flew high, and fell ahead of the quarry in brief spouts of torn water. At that, the blind ports in the stern of the merchantman opened up, and the sinister muzzles of the guns were run out with a gust of English cheering. Then their sudden voices boomed defiance, and the smoke rolled along the water and clung to the leaping waves.

Kingswell felt the deck jump under his feet. His pulses leaped with the good planks. "Hit!" he cried—and sure enough, one of the enemy's upper spars, with its burden of flapping canvas, tottered desperately, and then swooped down on the clustered buccaneers beneath. Half an hour later the Heart of the West was spinning along on her old course, and far astern the stranger lay to and nursed her wound.

Three days later, at high noon, the Narrows opened in the sheer brown face of the cliffs, and the people of the Heart of the West caught a glimpse of the harbour and the shipping beyond. Then the rocky portals seemed to close, and the spray flew like smoke along the unbroken ramparts. The ship was put about, and again the magic entrance opened and shut.

"I knows the channel, sir," said Tom Bent. "Ye needn't wait for no duff-headed pilot."

So the stout ship went 'round again, with a brisk shouting of men at the braces and a booming of canvas aloft. Her colours flew bravely in the sunlight, answering the colours of the fort and the battery on Signal Hill. She raced at the towering cliff as if she would try to overthrow it with her cocked-up bowsprit. Even Kingswell caught his breath. Beatrix looked away, so fearful was the sight of the unbroken rock that seemed to swim toward them with a voice of thunder and the smoking surf along its foot. Ouenwa wondered if Tom Bent were mad. But the boatswain gripped the big tiller, and squinted under the yards, and cocked an eye aloft at the flags and men on the cliff. Then, of a sudden, the narrow passage of green water, spray-fringed, opened under their bows, and the walls of rock slid aside and let them in.