THE BOAT FROM ÆGINA
The start was fixed for eight o'clock next morning, immediately after
breakfast.
There was nothing to hold them, and now that everything was clear,
with a steady glass, a fair wind and a full hold, a strange uneasiness
manifested itself amongst the afterguard of the _Lorna Doone_,
infecting even Sam.
It was the uneasiness that comes with the all-but-accomplished.
Bobby during the night had dreamed that the _Santa Margharita_ had
somehow sunk herself in the reef passage, blocking their exit; Martia
at breakfast was silent and Sam fidgety, rising to look at the glass.
The wind that had been blowing from west of north had shifted more to
the north, but the glass still held steady.
The skipper returned to his breakfast and the chart which he had
unfolded on the cloth. He was in the act of folding it up and rising
from the table when Bowler's voice came through the skylight.
"There's a boat comin' up, sir," cried Bowler. "Looks as if she was
layin' for the island."
Sam cast the chart on the table and dashed on deck. The others followed
him.
Sure enough, away to the nor'-nor'-west, a boat was coming; a
fishing-boat, seemingly, lateen rigged, with a vast triangular sail
like a swallow's wing pencilling itself against the sky. She was coming
with the swiftness of a swallow, and that she was making for Hyalos
there could be no doubt.
"She's only some island craft," said Sam. "Heavens, isn't she laying
the knots behind her? She's doing twelve, if she's doing an inch."
"Onhandy I call her," said Bowler. "That there yard was never made of a
single spar. Where'd she be if it was sprung? It's easy for her goin'
as she goes but I'd like to see her on a wind."
"What are you going to do?" asked Bobby.
"How d'you mean?"
"Well, oughtn't we to get out before she comes?"
"Oh, she's all right," replied Sam. "And she's seen us anyway. Better
stick and find out what she's after, if she comes here. Ten to one
she'll shift her helm."
"Yes," said Martia. "It's better not to run away. Let's just see what
they want. Maybe, after all, they are not coming here."
Meanwhile, the sail loomed larger and took on colour. There was some
dye in the canvas that now showed deep red and now rose-colour as the
great lateen yard swung to the wind. The hull, because of its colour,
was scarcely visible though she was coming close in now.
Yes, she was making for Hyalos. She took the passage through the reefs
without dropping a shred of canvas, the foam shearing from her stem
and the white gulls racing her across the bay in a grand curve, luffed
up into the wind and stopped dead. An old stone killick went overside
and the lateen yard came down with a run.
"Oh, how beautiful!" cried the girl, lost in admiration of this living
thing from the sea, so full of life and speed and the very breath of
freedom, yet in a moment tamed and halted. "I have never seen anything
so lovely as that. And look at the colours of it!"
The hull of the stranger was painted a green-blue after the fashion
of the Italian fishing-boats, turning to a darker tint near the water
line. She was open, with a covered-in poop where the steersman stood,
the goose-necked tiller still in his hand, and in the well, on the sand
ballast, the crew of half a dozen fellows with red handkerchiefs tied
round their heads were busy with the lateen yard and getting out a boat.
"They're coming aboard," said Bobby.
"Looks like it," said Sam. "If I didn't know to the contrary, I'd think
they had business with us--either friends or going to pirate us."
But the boat that put off was no pirate. Only two fellows were at the
oars and a third standing aft, with the steering oar.
It came alongside and hooked on and the steersman, dropping his oar,
came overside. A man of thirty or so, bronzed, with curly black hair,
rings in his ears and a smile that showed teeth evenly set and white as
a hound's.
Facing the strangers, he bowed to Martia, and then went for Sam,
who was standing a bit in advance of the others, in an explosion of
language that might have been abuse only for his manner.
"He's talking bad Italian," explained Sam to the others after the
torrent had lasted for a minute. "Petropolis is his name, as far as I
can make out, and he expected to meet us here, and is apologising for
being late. Rum business, and wants handling, seems to me."
He drew the newcomer aside, gave him a cigarette and then they talked.
Martia could not understand a word of what they were saying, but she
noticed, as the bronzed one talked and gesticulated, that he seemed
ill at ease, and now and then, as he swept his hand round indicating
Hyalos, his face took on a wild look as though something had frightened
him.
The talk lasted five or six minutes. Then it broke off and Sam turned
to the others, whilst Petropolis, relighting his cigarette, stood
suddenly quiet, his gaze roving about over the details of this strange
ship as though whatever he had said had ceased to be of the slightest
interest to him.
"Here's a rum yarn," said Sam. "This chap's from Ægina, away up north,
and, as far as I can make out, he was hired by an Italian to come down
here with his boat and bring four sponge-divers with him to meet a
vessel that would be waiting for him here. He was to put in nowhere
and say nothing to anyone, but he had to put in to Milo for water,
and at Milo one of his men got talking to the fishermen, and let out
that they were coming here. The fishermen warned him that Hyalos was
haunted or some rot of that sort; that dead men lived here; and that
not a fisherman in the islands would go near the place for fear of the
bad luck it would bring. He thinks we are the boat he was to meet, and
he's tumbling over himself with regrets because his men are nearly in
a state of mutiny and the sponge-divers refuse to have anything to do
with the place."
"I knew it," cried Martia. "I felt that there was something wrong about
that man Visconti. His was the boat they had to meet. Cruising for his
health? I never believed it."
"This is a nuisance," said Bobby.
Sam said nothing.
He saw as clearly as the others that the pleasant-spoken Visconti was,
a million to one, not after health, but treasure.
The human mind, suddenly brought into juxtaposition with a fateful
problem of this nature, often sees instinctively and in a flash its
true proportions. Sam saw quite clearly that, though it was a million
to one Visconti had come to Hyalos to dive for marbles, it was also a
million to one against the probability that his expedition would have
synchronised with that of the _Lorna Doone_ by chance.
Hyalos had been lying sealed for two thousand years, yet the _Lorna
Doone_ and the _Santa Margharita_ had arrived in the same month and for
the same purpose--loot. Common-sense viewing this statement would say
at once, "There must be some connection between these two expeditions;
the coincidence is too extraordinary."
"Suppose we go down below and talk it over," said Sam.
He followed Martia down below.
"I can't see the sense in this business at all," said he when they
were seated. "If that chap was lying, if he was really after the same
game as we, why did he sail off and leave us here? He knew that this
Petropolis man would be coming along and that, if we met him, we'd
guess the truth. Leaving that aside, why didn't he stick till we were
gone?"
"Maybe," said Bobby, "he thought we'd been working here and had cleaned
out the place. That night you dined with him, did you say by any chance
how long we'd been here, or say anything that might have given the show
away?"
Sam flushed under his tan.
"Do you think I'm a fool?" he asked.
"Not at all," said Bobby. He did not wish to push the matter, seeing
the condition in which the skipper had arrived home that night of the
dinner party on board the _Santa Margharita_. All the same, he felt in
his heart that Sam somehow or another had told more than he ought.
"Does Petropolis know that we aren't the people he was expecting to
meet?" he asked.
"No," replied Sam. "He doesn't. I didn't say a word; just let him run
on. He seems to think that the Italian fellow who gave him the order to
come here was our agent."
"Then," said Martia, "the thing to do is to pay him anything he wants
in reason, and let us get away at once. He can't ask much, as he says
his divers refuse to work here."
Sam left the cabin and came back in a minute.
"I've squared him for a thousand lire," said he. "That's ten pounds.
The chap's straight enough. He got ten pounds from the agent, whoever
he was, and the terms were ten pounds a week, he paying the divers. It
took him a week to come down, and it will take him a week to go back."
"Pay him," said Martia.
She fetched the ship's money, part of which was in sovereigns obtained
by Behrens from the Bank of England, and they went up. Two minutes
later Petropolis, with the money in his pocket, was overboard and
rowing for his boat.
The breeze had freshened a bit.
Bowler, with a glance to windward, chuckled.
"It's either row her or tow her out, with the wind as it is," said he.
"She come in easy, but it's not easy goin' out with a rig like that.
Onhandy, I call her."
"They're getting the sail on her, anyhow," replied Sam, watching as the
great lateen yard rose to a chorus like the calling of gulls. "Up goes
the killick. Now we'll see."
The stranger, her great sail bellying to the blue, gave a bound like a
startled horse and fled away shoreward, making a soldier's wind of it
and aiming as if to smash herself on the rocks, came round in a grand
curve and up into the wind, the foam racing out behind her as she sped
towards the reefs, aiming like an arrow for the channel. Bounding over
the slight incoming swell, and seeming to drive right into the wind's
eye, she cleared the passage and was away to sea.
Martia, her lips parted and her eyes bright with pleasure, watched the
departing one. It was less a ship than a creature, alive, sensitive,
beautiful.
Bowler, hit in the place where he kept his predictions, turned away
muttering something about the "Flyin' Dutchman."
Then at Sam's orders he went down to attend to the auxiliary engine.
The anchor was hove short and then broken out of the sand, the
auxiliary got to work, and the _Lorna_, with Sam at the wheel, turned
her nose to the break in the reefs.
Outside and beyond danger, the canvas went up and the ketch took the
wind, heeling to port and with her nose to the west.
They were out at last and free, at least for the moment. Hyalos astern
and far away towards the north the Greek boat, close-hauled and showing
her coloured sail against the pale azure of the horizon sky.
A gull from the island astern, still following them, wheeled with a
cry, drifted on the wind and then passed away, leaving them alone to
pursue their course across a sea desolate as when the _Argo_ had sailed
it in pursuit of the Golden Fleece.