Whatever the outcome of their talk may have been, the rising wind presently brought them back to the boat in a hurry. We launched her, and tumbled aboard, drenched from head to foot, and after a lively struggle came up alee of the brig. It was plain that we must soon seek shelter, for already the storm was blowing up and the waves came charging down upon us in fierce, racing lines.
"Yonder island," Matterson was saying, at the same time marking a diagram on the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other, "yonder island is part of the delta of the Rio Polo. It runs so—and so—and all but the island is washed away. You see, do you not, gentlemen? If Captain North will run straight so,—northeast by east, say,—holding his bearings by the angle of ripples where you see the current veer, and when we are four cables' lengths from the breakers give me the wheel, I will take her over the bar."
"Mr. Matterson—"
"The responsibility is mine, Captain North, by the owner's orders."
"Ah, Mr. Upham," said the captain, with a wry smile, "and is this the kind of support you give me?"
Not one word did my uncle say.
I had seen Pedro's monkey for a while playfully swinging from rope to rope and later scratching its ear as it sat on the companion hatch; but I had not seen it go below, nor had any of the others. To this day no one knows just how it evaded us, for it was forbidden the cabin, and every man on board had orders to head it off if it showed any inclination to go there. Yet the mischievous beast did slip below, and for once succeeded in catching Willie MacDougald off his guard.
Willie, it seems, had been engaged in the praiseworthy occupation of spying on Neil Gleazen, and had one eye firmly fixed to the keyhole of the cabin door when the monkey calmly jabbed teeth and claws into the luckless boy's leg.
His yell startled every man on deck; but far more than it startled us did it startle the man in the cabin, who had thought himself safe from peeping eyes.