I looked hard into the dwarf’s eyes. He bore my gaze for a minute steadily enough, and then tried to turn away.
‘You have lied in your throat!’ I cried—‘you have lied, and you know you have lied. There are two wrecks on the shoal.’
‘There may be a dozen for all I know,’ said the little man very stubbornly; ‘you may drown me if you will, but that will not put you nearer the treasures of the Santa Fè.’
Captain Jem paused and looked round upon the men, as though he were collecting their thoughts. Just then, the boatswain hailed from the schooner that the weather was getting very ugly to the southward. We all looked up, and saw an ominous black cloud lying looming upon the sea, its upper edges gilded with a lurid glow, as though edged with red-hot iron. The regular trade wind, too, had ceased to blow, except in faint sickly puffs, and the schooner began to rise and sink upon great swelling undulations from the southward, so that loose ropes and blocks shook and rattled, and the gaffs of the foresail and mainsail swung to and fro with a creaking, wheezing sound. It was clear that something unpleasant was brewing.
‘Fasten a spare oar to the line,’ says the captain, pointing to the rope which descended to the wreck, ‘we may as well buoy the place.’ His directions were obeyed.
‘Now, pull for the schooner. Lash that man’s arms there with a bit of spun-yarn; he has brought it upon himself.’ And in a minute we were safe on board, and the dwarf, who made no resistance, was thrust well pinioned into the cabin.
‘We have no time to trifle,’ said the captain; and so we all thought, precious moments had been lost, without the symptoms of the weather having been attended to.
‘We were looking for the gold,’ said the captain.
‘And we were looking at you,’ replied the boatswain. In ten minutes the anchor was up, the boats hoisted in, the sails set double reefed, and the schooner beating to the southward against heavy puffs of wind and a great tumbling swell. Our object was to weather either of the branches or horns of the shoal, then we could either scud or lie to, having plenty of sea-room. What we feared was, that the force of the squalls would strike us before we got clear of the fork in which we were embayed. Meantime the sky was growing every moment of a more lurid colour, as though the arch of heaven had been a great vault of brazen metal, and the surf was breaking in awful surges upon the reefs.
‘Captain,’ says Bristol Tom, who was at the tiller, ‘we shall not weather the point; the wind heads her every moment.’ And as he spoke, the sails flapped like thunder, and a great swell lifted the schooner and flung her bodily back a dozen fathoms. One of the men from the forecastle cried at the same time that the wind was coming, for that the sea was breaking white about a league away.