Wind was fresh at first, and the ugly cutter's stem hissed through the water like red-hot iron; but as the moon rose into a steel-blue sky amongst bright white stars, the breeze dropped till it scarcely gave us steerage-way. Haigh sat smoking at the tiller throughout the night; Taltavull and I patrolled the narrow decks, chatting. We none of us felt inclined for sleep.
Dawn came with a flash of vivid green, the sulphur-coloured disc hard upon its heels. We were then off the south-western corner of Minorca, with the high ground on the northern parts of the sister island standing up clearly against the horizon. Even from that distance we could make out with the glasses a watch-tower on the peninsula which divides Pollensa Bay from Alcudia. Up there the sentinels of those naked slingers who loved wine and women when the world was young had peered over the blue sea for a first sight of Roman or Carthaginian pirate galley.
"Happy times when those men lived," said the anarchist; "there were few laws to trouble them."
"Happy indeed," echoed Haigh, "for a boy with a taste for liquor and ladies, and who thought unlimited head-breaking a pleasing diversion."
In the middle of the channel a steamer passed us on her way to Algiers. She was the Eugène Perrier, the very Transatlantique Company's boat that had put us on our course again during that wild, tearing race from Genoa.
The fact was pointed out, and we looked her over again as one looks at an old friend who has rendered a big service.
"Bit of a change this day from that, isn't it?" said Haigh.
"About as big as they make 'em," I admitted.
"I'm not so sure that I care for it, though," said he. "It had its strong points that trip."
"Especially when it was over," I agreed. "Yes, it's fine to look back at."