There was no hint of triumph in my great-uncle's manner as the sloop came about and lay to under our lee quarter; nor did he exhibit excitement when she unloosed the small boat she towed astern and a half-dozen swarthy fellows commenced to pull it toward us. He indulged in a pinch of snuff and took his station by the starboard rail at the break of the poop. Peter and I followed him. Besides us there was only Martin, who stood aft by the man at the wheel. For'ard on the spar-deck men slouched away from the starboard bulwarks as Murray appeared. The gunports were all closed because of the swell which rolled the Royal James until it seemed she must dip her yard-arms under. So I think—aside from the lookouts lashed in the crosstrees of all three masts—we on the poop were the only ones who watched the little boat come sliding across the great, heaving mountains of water that surged out of the misty reaches of the Caribbean as if they would overflow the shores of Hispaniola, which loomed purple in the north beyond leagues of indigo sea.
The rowboat was as infinitesimal as an insect in those tossing wastes; but the man at the steering-oar guided it with uncanny skill, up the toppling crests that threatened to crush it, down the dizzy steeps that bade fair to hurl it to the ocean's oozy bottom, and brought it to rest a scant fifty feet from the James' hull, his long sweep fending and twisting to maintain the position. He was very dark and lean, with bare, corded limbs and a sinewy trunk covered by the remnants of a cotton shirt and trousers. His hair was a stringy black. His voice, when he spoke in answer to a sign from my great-uncle, was harshly rhythmical, but what he said I could not understand, for both he and Murray used Spanish.
My great-uncle asked two questions, both brief, and he answered as briefly. My great-uncle waved his hand again; he dug his steering-oar into the crest of one of the monstrous surges, and the little boat shot away like a roundshot from a gun. A few moments later we saw them make fast to the sloop and leap aboard, one by one. The sloop hauled her wind and beat off to westward in long, slanting tacks, and the James was once more alone in the western mouth of the Mona Passage, Hispaniola a blur in the north and Porto Rico somewhere out of sight southeast of us.
Murray dusted a second pinch of snuff into his nostrils as he turned from the rail.
"Our three weeks' waiting hath not been in vain," he said. "The Santissima Trinidad was to sail from Porto Bello within the forty-eight hours after Diego put forth. She will be up with us in another five days—before the week is over at the latest."
I was conscious of a conflict of emotions.
"She may slip by you. 'Tis a wide gut—and what's to do if she comes in the night?"
"She can not slip by," returned my great-uncle. "For all the leagues of channel and the darkness of the nights, she can not slip by, Robert. The fools have delivered her into our hands. By her sailing-orders, so Diego told me, she must hug the south shore of Hispaniola, that she may be within easy run of Santo Domingo in case of accident. As for the nights, she'll be lighted up like Bartholomew's Fair."
"Ja, it's all right if dot Englishman we sighted last week don't find a frigate," said Peter.
Murray's face fell a trifle.