“But it won’t last,” said Burgess gruffly. “It’ll either drop to a dead calm at sundown, or swing round and be dead ahead.”
“Well, I don’t mind the last,” replied the captain, “but a dead calm would be dangerous, and sets me thinking whether it wouldn’t be better to be off at once.”
“Well, that depends on you,” said the mate. “If it was me I should stop till night and chance it. But where do you mean to go? Right away home?”
“I don’t know yet,” was the reply. “For some reasons I should like to stop and see Don Ramon right out of his difficulties. Besides, I have a little business to transact with him that may take days. No, I shan’t go off yet. I may stay here for months, working for Don Ramon. It all depends.”
“Very well,” said the mate coolly, as if it did not matter in the slightest degree to him so long as he was at sea.
From time to time the skipper in his walk up and down the deck paused to look up inquiringly, but always to be met with a quiet shake of the head, and go on again.
But about half-an-hour before sundown, just when festivities were at their height on shore, and the men were for the most part idling about, leaning over the bulwarks and watching as much of the proceedings as they could see, the two lads, after an hour’s rest below, having returned to their look-out, Fitz suddenly exclaimed—
“There she is! But she doesn’t look grey.”
“No,” replied Poole eagerly. “What there is of her looks as if turned to gold.” Then loudly, “Sail ho!” though there was not a sail in sight, only the steamer’s funnel slowly coming into sight from behind one headland and beginning to show her smoke.
All was activity now, the men starting to their different places at the bulwarks, and eagerly listening to the skipper’s “Where away?”