The wind that had been blowing fresh all day from the south-east had by evening freshened into a gale, and the schooner was running before it with reefed mainsail. As the sun sank red among the storm-clouds, and lit the western horizon with a lurid glare, something more solid than a cloud interrupted the unbroken line. The man at the wheel saw it, and called the attention of the mate whose watch it was.
“Land ahead, sir!”
“That be hanged for a yarn! There’s no land within two hundred miles of us, and what there is ain’t in that quarter.”
“What is the nearest land?” asked Benion.
“The Fijis. The old man took sights this morning and reckoned we’d pass to the nor’rard of the Fijis some time to-morrow if the wind held. They’re marked in the charts as high land, and we ought to see them thirty miles off or more.” Then shading his eyes with his hand, he gazed at the spot on the fast darkening horizon that looked now more than ever like a cloud.
“Why, you must have the jimmies if you call that land!” he said over his shoulder. “Keep her up half a point.” He glanced at the compass-card, spat over the lee-rail, and went forward.
In a few moments the white foam-flakes turned to grey, faded and vanished, and night fell like a great black cloth flung over the troubled sea. With the darkness the wind seemed to get stronger, the seas bigger, and the vessel more frail and helpless. She was advancing by a series of bounds as each great roller overtook and lifted her stern, poised and flung her forward, and then surged roaring past her, leaving her as it were stranded in the gulf between it and the next, whose swelling base the stern began again to climb.
At eight o’clock the captain came on deck, glanced aloft and to windward, and ordered the look-out to be doubled. Benion was sitting on the main-hatch smoking, and emitting a shower of sparks from his pipe with each gust of wind.
“Anywhere near land, cap?” he shouted.