“I guess our chances have gone down fifty cents in the dollar,” he said. “Get a range of cable up on deck. Then we’ll have the boat cleared handy and the hatch-wedges out.”
The men became busy amidst a rattle of chain, and then stood where it was a little dryer between the masts, with their shadows lying black upon the silvery cloths of the foresail. They were watching the steamer, which was rising upon one quarter with the smear of smoke blowing away from her. Appleby could see her plainly now, a strip of black hull that rolled with slanted spars across the harmonies of blue and silver – and she seemed to him portentous in her shadowiness, for there was no blink of light on board her.
“The ‘Enseñada’?” said Harper.
“Si, señor!” said Rosendo, with a little gesture which was very expressive.
Harper pulled at the wheel, and Appleby saw that he was addressing him.
“There are two of their gunboats on this coast, and it’s quite in the usual course that it’s the one I don’t want to see that turns up,” he said. “Her commander has a little grievance against me.”
Appleby did not ask him what it was. He had something else to think of, and the swift upward lurches and wisps of spray that blew about the “Ventura” made conversation difficult. The seas also seemed to be growing steeper as she closed with the land, and washed in as they went smoking past. Still, but for that sinister shape steadily rising higher on one quarter he could have found pleasure in the scene. The wail of wind, the humming of the shrouds, patter of spray, and roar of frothy seas stirred the blood in him, while the swift reeling rush when the bows went up brought him a curious sense of exultation.
It was stress and effort of muscle and body he had hungered for in the sleepy English town, for slow endurance was nothing new to him, and he was apparently to get it now. There was a meaning in the tense black figures of the men, and the grim impassiveness of Harper’s face as he stiffened his grasp on the wheel, for human fibre was under strain as well as hemp and wood and metal, which groaned under the pressure which racked them to the uttermost limit. Yet while the gunboat crept up astern Appleby felt at home, as though this was not a novel sensation, and he had been through it all, or something very similar, more than once before. The fixed look in the eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, the set faces, and the rigidity of the men’s pose appeared in a curious fashion familiar.
A flash from the steamer roused him, there was a detonation, and a quarter of a mile beyond them a little white cloud rose from the sea. Some of the black figures swung round, but Appleby looked straight in front of him. He did not know why he avoided any abrupt movement, but he felt without reflection that it was incumbent on him. It was, however, not the first time a man of his or his mother’s name had stood outwardly unmoved, at least, under artillery fire.
There was also something to see ahead – a dim, forest-shrouded littoral across which the vapors were streaming, and a faint white line of beach. In the foreground were broad streaks of froth, and the long blur of a jutting point with a yeasty seething about the end of it. Away on the other hand lay a smear of dusky trees, and the gap between them and the point was, he surmised, the bay they had been looking for. It held no shelter for them that he could see. Then Harper called the Spaniard Rosendo.
“There’s not going to be water in for an hour yet, anyway,” he said.
Rosendo shook his head. “There is much tree on the Point,” he said.
Harper appeared reflective. “Yes,” he said, “that’s what I was thinking. Well, with this wind the Point would break the sea, and she mightn’t bump the bottom out of her if we did put her on the bar. Those fellows couldn’t get a clear shot at us across the trees, and they wouldn’t be anxious to send boats in considering the sea that’s running. Still, there’s a thing that’s worrying me.”
He glanced forward towards one of the streaks of froth which Appleby surmised showed where a reef lay below, and Rosendo made an expressive grimace.
“Los Dientes!” he said, and spread his arms out as though to indicate a measure. “One brazo a half now.”
Harper nodded. “I can’t run for the gut behind it without bringing that fellow too close,” he said. “If I go round to weather we’ll have to close-haul her, and he’d come up near enough to sink us if we took sail off her. Still, she’ll scarcely carry what she has got now on the wind.”
Rosendo shrugged his shoulders as he said in Castilian, “Between the fire and the cooking pot there is not much choice, my friend!”
Then the men between the masts came aft together, and one of them, whose color was not exactly white, stopped in front of Harper.
“We have no use for being run slap on the Dientes, and she’s not going to work off it if we hold on much longer.”
Harper swung a hand up commandingly. “When I’m not fit to sail this boat I’ll ask your help,” he said. “I’ve a good deal less use for showing the Spaniard just what I mean to do while he could spoil my hand by altering his course a point or two. Get your boom-foresail over, and the staysail on to her!”
It was done, though the “Ventura” rolled her rail in when the big sail swung banging over. By and by Harper brought the wind abeam, and she drove along at an angle to her previous course, with one side hove high, while the sea came in in cataracts over either bow. Appleby clutched the rail, for the deck slanted away beneath him, and he wondered how the barefooted men kept their footing. The other rail was apparently level with the sea, and the brine that sluiced down the incline washed knee-deep inside it. The masts sloped as the deck did, with the spray beating like grapeshot into the foresail between them; but the topmasts above them slanted further, and Appleby understood why Harper’s face was anxious when he glanced aloft. The gunboat was within easy range now, and it was evident there would be no escape for them if anything yielded under the strain. In fact, Appleby was wondering whether her commander felt sure of them since he was not firing, when there was another flash followed by the roar of a gun. An unseen object that could be heard through the sound of wind and sea passed between the masts, and Harper nodded.
“I guess that decides the thing. What she can’t carry she’ll have to drag,” he said.
She dragged it for another five minutes, staggering under a press of sail, and then there was a crash aloft, and topmast and mainsail gaff fell to leeward together. A clamor of voices went up, and the “Ventura’s” bows swung round a little further off the wind; while Appleby, who saw Harper’s face in the moonlight, noticed that it was set and very grim.
“You can run down the staysail and outer jib so she’ll not fall to leeward all at once,” he said.
The men went forward floundering amidst the spray, and the plunges grew a trifle easier, while the seas swung the “Ventura” aloft instead of deluging her; but a glance made the position unpleasantly plain to Appleby. To leeward lay the white frothing on the Dientes reef, and he surmised that the “Ventura” could not clear it without her after canvas; to windward the gunboat, coming down on them rapidly. There was, it seemed, no escape, and he wondered vaguely what would happen. Harper said nothing whatever, but stood with his lean figure casting a black shadow upon the crippled mainsail, grasping the wheel. So they drove on for another five minutes, and then, with a glance at the gunboat, the skipper straightened himself.
“They’re not going to have the guns, and the schooner might fetch ten dollars when I’m through with her,” he said. “Get the foresail off her, and stand by to swing out the boat!”
The sail came down thrashing, and the men stood very still and silent when they had hooked the tackles on the boat. Their faces were turned forward, and Appleby guessed that they were watching the white upheavals that showed where the seas rolled across the submerged reef. This was not astonishing, for the “Ventura’s” bows had swung further round, and it was evident that Harper was running them upon it. Appleby was sensible of a curious