Talking in this manner, the first part of the night wore away, and, as it waxed late, the gale began to lull. You may be sure in all our converse we never took our eyes from the schooner’s lights, which rose and sank regularly upon the seas. But we were soon relieved of our anxiety regarding her, by observing that she rather clawed away from the shore than approached it, and we knew well that not an eye would be closed aboard the schooner that eventful night. About midnight the heavy clouds to windward began to break, and the schooner burnt another blue light, by which we saw that she had a reef out of her sails, and was standing on and off snugly enough, the sea going down very fast.
Thereupon we all retired to the cave, the Indians doing the honours of their abode with such simple grace, that Nicky called them two brown old gentlemen without clothes, and swore that he would run the risk of being wrecked again to be so kindly tended. It was indeed a happy meal! Lanscriffe and his comrades had gone down to the stranded ship, and returned laden with good cheer, and every few minutes, as we ate, and drank, and laughed, one of us would start up and run out to see how the schooner fared, and come back with the news that the wind was going down more and more, and that our friends were all safe, a league from the rocks, and riding as snugly as though the schooner were lying in a millpond.
‘And all the old faces are still on board?’ quoth I.
‘Every one of them,’ answered Nicky; ‘all our old party of the Marmousettes in Hispaniola, from Stout Jem down to Blue Peter, and, indeed, almost every man we shipped in Jamaica, including Mr. Bell, who hath become such a reformed character, that it seems as if that keel-hauling, which you remember, has had the most beneficial effect in washing the roguery out of him.’
‘And the negro,’ says I; ‘the Spanish negro, we captured fishing for pisareros off Carthagena?’
‘Oh! he was sent ashore with the sailors of the galleon, who, I hear, landed at Porto Bello.’
‘There was,’ says I, ‘on board that galleon, one old man, a merchant—’
‘He who told Stout Jem that you had escaped from the Spaniards at Carthagena—a grave and reverend old man,’ said Nicky. ‘He bore his loss so tranquilly, that I thought, and others thought it too, that he went over the side of the galleon into the boat with some of the most precious parts of his goods concealed upon, his person. A sly old fox, to be sure.’
To tell the truth, I was not sorry to hear this.
‘We got enough from him as it was, Nicky,’ I said.