Then both saw the phosphorus gleam and fade, gleam and fade as the waves broke over the coral. Eerie jade-green and white-gold, the phosphorus shone in the starlight.
"Reef-ho!" sang out Abner, and the sound of his shout was echoed back from the closeness of the shore in faint dangerous mockery. "Reef-ho!"
"Reef-ho!" came a third time from the bridge, and then "Heave-ho!" thundered Captain Blizzard. "Drop anchor, lads!"
Abner left his place to go back and lend a hand, and in his sudden solitude Chris grasped a rope and swung down to the water.
A porpoise slipped away from the Mirabelle and moved this way and that to get its bearings. Then the mass of the reef to the left and the hidden shelf of a second but obscured underwater reef to the right made dark patches in the phosphorescence. Far below lay the ghostly spread of sand, and the porpoise nosed its way forward.
The channel to the cove proved to be some five hundred yards long, and it seemed no time before the porpoise passed from the shadow of the trees at the shore into the starlit cup of the cove. Taking a turn about in the enjoyment of flipping its fins and giving a leap or two, the big fish then went back toward where the Mirabelle hung suspended on the glassy sea.
A boy it was that pulled himself up hand over hand along the anchor rope and stood dripping sea water on the bridge before Captain Blizzard.
"I've found the channel, sir," he said, abruptly conscious of his importance from the admiring way in which Amos was staring at him. "There's a dangerous shelf of coral that juts out on the port side—if you let me go first, and the men man the boats and row her in, I think we shall do it safely even in this light."
Captain Blizzard looked at him, his expression both serious and trusting.
"Well lad, we do what we must, and you and I understand one another. Ahoy there!" he roared down to the shadowy decks from which the black spikes of masts rose high to break the sky. "Man the boats! We shall tow the Mirabelle to cover, for there's a channel here!"