With that, she descended into her boat, compass in hand, ordered her rowers to give way, and vanished into the darkness of the fog—not following the Skipper, but departing at a tangent from his course.
The steward hastened to the quarter-deck, secured the shot-gun, and perched upon the rail.
The Cockney was by no means lacking in acuteness. He had been cleaning up a muss in the stern cabin for the last half-hour; he knew that this muss was the debris from several ammunition packets, broken from the packing-case of ammunition that had been hauled in upon the morning previous. He knew that the scarlet geranium had been transplanted into a keg. He knew that this keg had previously been full of gunpowder; he knew likewise that the skipper had laboriously fashioned a fuse—and that the tide was now going out.
So as he perched upon the starboard taffrail and scrutinized the blank fog, the steward had a fairly certain idea of what to expect.
"Gawd 'elp them yeller swine!" he observed reflectively. "Skipper's going to lye out that oil; it'll drift around 'em wi' the tide. That's what 'e was w'iting for, the hold fox! When the oil 'as got hall haround that ship, skipper sends 'is boat at 'er. Ho! Then 'e gets off in Mr. Leman's boat, first lightin' the fuse. Then 'e lights the oil. Oil an' fuse—and then the jar o' powder—blime, but 'e's a fox, a ruddy fox! Ho! And then the Missus she takes a 'and—only I bet skipper 'e don't know as 'ow that fusee is dry! Thinks it's wet as when 'e made it, 'e does! Well, wait an' see——"
His reflections ended in a chuckle. The steward, having no personal anticipation of danger, cared not a snap what went on out in the mist; in fact, he looked forward to a very enjoyable time.
The tide had turned, right enough, and was strongly on the ebb. Rolling himself a cigarette, the steward stretched along the rail and waited comfortably; he could feel the ship lift and tug and vibrate as the pull of the tide-current swung her on the taunt hawsers from stem and stern. The steward watched the dim banks of fog with lazy anticipation. He was in the position of a front-seat spectator, and was determined to have a good time.
Thus, being intent upon the fog, waiting for the first flare of yellow flame and the first wild yell of alarm, the steward relaxed all vigilance as regarded his own surroundings. He was no seaman, and when the Pelican gave a queer little sideways lurch, he merely shifted his position slightly and reflected that a wave must have struck her. Still there came no sound from the fog, no token of flaring oil or fighting men. The steward lighted his cigarette and reflected that emptying the oil bags seemed to take considerable time.
It was perhaps five minutes later that a queer sound came from forward—a sound not unlike the breaking of a lax violin string, but deeper. The steward did not hear it at all; but a seaman would have known that somewhere a taut cable had parted. When the brigantine began to rock gently and evenly, the steward took for granted that there must be a ground-swell or something of that sort.
Behind the steward moved a queer grotesque figure—a figure that might have been some strange nightmare shape moving silently in the darkness; a figure with enormous and bulbous head which rocked upon its shoulders in monstrous and uncanny fashion. The figure came to a pause just behind the steward whose position was rendered quite certain by the cigarette spark.