I had seen the boat-steerers and hunters set their spritsails many times, yet this was my first attempt.

What took them possibly two minutes took me twenty, but in the end I succeeded in setting and trimming it, and with the steering-oar in my hands hauled on the wind.
"There lies Japan," I remarked, "straight before us." "Humphrey Van Weyden," she said, "you are a brave man." "Nay," I answered, "it is you who are a brave woman." We turned our heads, swayed by a common impulse to see the last of the _Ghost_.

Her low hull lifted and rolled to windward on a sea; her canvas loomed darkly in the night; her lashed wheel creaked as the rudder kicked; then sight and sound of her faded away, and we were alone on the dark sea..