For an hour they stood toward the land, then Malcolm came down from aloft smiling, and there ran through the ship a great wave of talk. Though a man had never sailed those seas before, he would not have found the reason for their talk hard to guess, since there were few secrets on board. Time and distance had made less the grumbling occasioned by the disastrous brush with the Porcupine and by the littleness of the profit got from the pink, and they had warmed their hearts with the Old One's tales.
Bearing to the west, the Rose of Devon skirted the dark shore for miles; but the master and mate were growing anxious lest dawn overtake them before they should reach the hiding-place they sought; and when they rounded a certain wooded point and sailed into a deep, secluded bay where a ship might lie for a year unseen,—which put an end to their fears,—they let go their anchors with all good will and furled their sails; and at break of day they kedged the ship into a cove that might have been a dock, so straight were the shores and so deep the water.
"Mind you, Ned," or "Mind you, Hal, the night we landed on Hispaniola?" the men from the Blue Friggat were saying. And "'Twas thou at my side when we stole down through the palms and bottled the garrison in the little fort." And "Ah, what wine we got that night!"
"Yea, and how drunk we got! So that Martin Barwick was of a mind to go fight a duel with the captain of the soldiers. And then they burst out and drove us all away, and there was an end of our taking towns for a long, long while."
"I will have you know that I was no drunker than any man else," Martin snarled, and they laughed uproariously.
"Come," cried another, "since we have laid our ship in her chosen berth, let us sleep while the idlers watch. We shall be off in the cool of the afternoon."
"Nay, in the morning!"
"Afternoon or morning matters little," said old Jacob thickly, in the corner where he sat watching all the men. "The hour is near when we shall lay in the hold a goodly cargo. I know well this town. We need only find two more such towns to get the money to keep us the rest of our lives like so many dukes, each of us in a great house in England, with a park full of deer, and the prettiest tavern wenches from all the country round to serve us in the kitchen."
That day, while the men slept in such cool places as they could find, the cook and the carpenter stood watch; and a very good watch they kept, for they were prudent souls and feared the Old One and dared not steal a wink of sleep. But though there was much need that the men should sleep, there was small need of a watch, for the ship lay in that deep cove in the little round bay, with masses of palms on the high banks, which hid her from waterline to truck.
At mid-afternoon, as the Old One had bade them, the cook and the carpenter called the men, who came tumbling up, quickly awake and breathing heavily, since there was work to be done ere another morning broke, and, like enough, blood to be spilled.