CLEARY!
Dinner was over and Jude had run up on deck. Suddenly her voice came
down through the open skylight.
“Below there! Cleary’s coming!”
Satan jumped from his place like a man shot. Next moment he was on
deck. Jude pointed and handed him the binoculars she had been using.
“That’s them!” said Satan, after a long look. “Cuss the swabs!”
He handed the glasses to Ratcliffe.
Away to the north two sails cut the sea-line. With the aid of the
glasses two vessels leaped into view,—a topsail schooner and a smaller
vessel of fore-and-aft rig. Even with the glasses he could not have
been sure that these were the _Natchez_ and the _Juan_ like a pair of
evil dogs hunting in company; but Satan was sure, so was Jude.
“They’re coming dead for the cay,” said Jude. Satan said nothing.
He had been filling his pipe when the hail came, he lit it now, walked
to the starboard rail to be alone, and stood with his eyes fixed on the
_Haliotis_.
The position was as bad as could be. First of all, these ruffians would
be sure to make him bail up even more than he had had out of them;
secondly, they would have the laugh at him and post him as a mug all
over Havana; thirdly, they would give him away about the _Haliotis_, if
they discovered how he had plundered her.
Having smoked for a moment in silence, he turned to his companions.
It was a boast of Satan’s that he had never lost a spar, a fact partly
due to luck, partly to his foreseeing eye; like a good general, he had
plans for all eventualities.
“They won’t be in the lagoon for a couple of hours,” said he, “with
this wind and all. Come on aboard the old tub.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Jude. “Sink her at her moorings?”
“No time; besides, they’d see her on the lagoon floor. It’s up anchor
and let her drift on the sands.”
“What’s the good of that?”
“Oh, Lord! Don’t stand jibberin’! I’ve got my plan. Into the dinghy
with you!”
They rowed over to the _Haliotis_.
The one thing that Satan had not coveted was, mercifully, the winch;
it was of the type of the West Country winch, and not a spot on Pap’s
patent, at least in Satan’s eyes.
They set to, got the anchor in, secured it, and rowed back to the
_Sarah_. Then they watched the _Haliotis_ drift. The tide was going
out. She was close to the eastern arm of the spit, and that arm had a
bead in it toward the narrowing entry.
Satan reckoned she would take the sand a hundred yards or so from the
entry, and he reckoned right.
But they had no time to watch her. The deck of the _Sarah_ was lumbered
with stuff that had to be stowed out of sight. It took an hour before
everything was shipshape and snug, and by that time the oncomers were
close in, their sails big bellied with the wind, beating up for the
entrance.
They came through, the _Juan_ leading, the _Natchez_ some two cable
lengths behind; then, with canvas threshing and the gulls yelling
round them, they dropped their anchors, the _Juan_ to starboard of the
_Sarah_ and the _Natchez_ farther up the lagoon. Ratcliffe had expected
demonstrations of hostility: there were none.
They could see Sellers directing the fellows forward, and they could
make out Cleary on the deck of the _Natchez_. Then they saw Sellers
drop below, and through the binoculars they could see Cleary as though
he were only a few yards off,—he was smoking and giving orders to the
hands. Then he came and spat over the rail and stood looking toward the
_Sarah_ with his eyes shaded; having finished this inspection, he too
dropped below.
“I’d a sight sooner they’d shook their fists at us,” said Satan. “They
know they’ve got us, sure.”
Then Sellers reappeared on the deck, and the _Juan_ dropped a boat.
“Here he is,” said Jude, “and whether he’s got us or whether he
hasn’t, he ain’t coming aboard this ship!”
She ran forward and fetched the mop from the hole where it was stowed.
“Let up!” said Satan. “I don’t want no fightin’: I tell you, I’ve got a
plan; I don’t want no mops in it.”
“He ain’t coming aboard,” said Jude.
As the boat of the _Juan_ came alongside, Sellers, in the sternsheets,
raised his hand in a lordly fashion and slightly, as befitted a
superior taking notice of an inferior.
“Hullo, Satan!” cried Sellers as the bow oar hooked on.
“Hullo, yourself!” replied Satan. “What you doin’ down here away?”
“Tell you when I get aboard,” said Sellers. “Why, there’s the kid!
Hullo, Kid!”
“Claws off!” cried Jude. “You try to come aboard and I’ll land you with
this mop! You can talk from the boat.”
Sellers sat down again in the sternsheets.
“She won’t let you aboard,” said Satan, speaking as though Jude were
not present. “You shouldn’t have sassed her the way you did over there
at Lone.”
“I’m sure I beg your pardon,” said Sellers. “I’m trooly sorry to have
trod on a female’s sussuptibilities; but what I’m wishin’ to say is
this, and it’s as easy said from here as on deck: You’ve got to come
aboard the _Juan_, you and that thousand dollars you’ve had from Cark,
to say nothin’ of the coin you’ve had from Cleary, an’ be tried by C’t
Martial, an’ take your sentence. If you don’t, I’ll board you, me
and Cleary, an’ go through your ship, an’ fling the lot of you in the
lagoon—d’you take me? I’m not funnin’.”
“I’ll come,” said Satan. “I want to have a talk with Cark anyhow.”
“And he wants to have a talk with you.”
“Right. Off you go, and I’ll follow.”
“Swab!” said Jude, “are you going to pay them that thousand dollars
back? I’d sooner chuck it in the lagoon!”
“I’d pay a thousand dollars to see Cark done in the eye,” replied
Satan. “Where’s the damage? I’ve hived more than two thousand dollars’
worth of stuff off that blistered derelic’. You leave them cusses to
me.”