TIDE AND CURRENT
He lit a pipe. Having disposed of the fragments of the bottle, he got
the mop and a bucket of water and swabbed the rum-stained deck. Then he
took his seat forward and watched the sunset.
The great sun, half-shorn of his beams and bulging broad as Jupiter,
lolled above the reef in a sky of laburnum gold fading to aquamarine.
Gulls, dark as withered leaves, blew about him, and shifting here and
there to north and south became gulls of gold, while the wind blowing
up from the gulf and the westward running current, meeting the last of
the flood, broke the sea surface into a million tiny dancing waves,
momentary mirrors dazzling the eye with shattered light.
Lone Reef seemed well named. Dawn or sunset or the blaze of full day
could not take from its desolation, and this evening the sinister line
of the wreck dominated everything, turning the blaze of sunset to the
light of a funeral pyre.
The _Sarah_, moving to the swell, creaked and whimpered, and now and
then from below he could hear voices,—Jude’s voice and the voice of
Satan. Beyond that came the murmur of the reef and the clang of the
gulls, and now and again a snatch of Spanish song from the _Juan_.
Then the sun passed below the reef, the tide began to draw out, and
the _Sarah_, swinging to it, brought to his view the _Juan_ and the
_Natchez_, ships of dusk in a world of dusk powdered with star dust.
Presently a light was run up on the _Natchez_, then the _Juan_ put up
her riding light, then Satan appeared, a dusky form, rising from the
cabin hatch and followed by Jude.
They came forward. Jude squatted on the deck, and Satan drew close to
Ratcliffe.
“Now, if them skunks had any sense in their skulls, they’d stick out
a guard boat,” said Satan; “but I’ve fair put the hood on them, I
b’lieve, and they’ve never saw what I was after, pretendin’ I had no
oil for an anchor light. Why, they are only fit to be put out to nuss!
Half an hour more and we’ll be off.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“Knock the shackle off the anchor chain an’ let her drift. Tide an’
current is runnin’ four knots.”
“But even without the anchor light they’ll be able to see us by the
stars.”
“Lord bless you! at this distance they won’t be able to see mor’n a
glimpse of us. We’ll go so gradual they won’t notice. If they keep
a lookout at all,—which they won’t, ten to one,—he’ll see us by
believin’ we’re there.”
“Lord! I’d love to see their faces in the morning!” murmured Jude.
“But won’t they go for you when we get back to Havana?” asked
Ratcliffe.
“Not they,” said Satan. “They’ll say nothin’, seein’ as how they’re
done and the laugh’s against them. Why, Cark will respect me more for
this job than if I’d run straight with him over the biggest deal. If
it’d been the other way about and he’d pulled the dollars off me, I’d
have been nowhere with him. Mind you out here, if I was to stick here
till tomorrow, they’d be aboard and maybe manhandling us if I didn’t
bail up; but back in Havana the thing will be closed and the accounts
wrote off.”
The sound of a guitar came through the dusk, crossing the warm wind,
the lazy, languorous wind of a perfect summer’s night. Seville, which
he had never seen, rose before Ratcliffe, firefly-haunted orange
groves, lovely women all skewered together by the remembered words of a
ribald song.
“When I was a student at Cadiz!”
“There goes old Catguts,” said Satan. “He’s the band aboard the
_Juan_,—Antonio, Alonzo, Alphonso—damn his name!”
“It ain’t,” said Jude. “It’s that old copper-patch Cleary’s got with
him. I’ve heard him in harbor. I gave him a plug of tobacco once for
getting me some bait, and he showed me the thing. It’s got a crack
in it or suthin’, and makes a noise like a skeeter in a jug,—kind
a fizzin’ noise between the plonks. He’s got an ulster on his leg
so’s you can see the bone. He took off the rags an’ showed me—he’s a
Portugee.”
“Well, it’s time to get busy,” said Satan. “Here, h’ist yourself and
lend a hand!”
Ratcliffe got more forward while they knocked the shackle off the
chain. There came a splash. Then the meeting resumed.
“If they heard that splash,” said Satan, “they’d put it down to a fish
jumpin’. Now you watch them lights.”
Ratcliffe watched the amber lights of the _Natchez_ and _Juan_. They
did not seem to alter position in the least. In the first of the
starlight and the last of the dusk the spars and hulls of the two
vessels could just be made out.
Then presently he saw that the lights had drawn a bit more aft and
seemed closer together. The feel of the _Sarah_ was different too, she
moved more freely to the swell.
The sound of the guitar seemed slightly fainter.
Now and then the beguiling sea would give the _Sarah_ a little slap, no
louder than the slap of a girl’s hand, on the low planking as if joking
with her over some secret shared in common.
Yes, the sound of the guitar was fainter, much fainter, and the
spars and hulls of the vessels now invisible as though they had been
dissolved in the gloom.
The anchor lights alone marked their places.
“We’re all right now,” said Satan; “but I’ll give them another five
minutes. Got the matches for the binnacle light?”
“Yes,” said Jude.
Five minutes passed, then they got the canvas on her, and Satan, at
the wheel, taking his bearings from the far-off lights of the betrayed
ones, turned the spokes.
“Where are you going to sail for?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Cormorant Cay,” said Satan. “I’ve a fancy to look at that place.”