“Maybe,” said Satan; “but you never know what a woman is, seems to me, till she’s been rubbed against a man. Those were Pap’s words and he’d got a headpiece on him. Well, I reckon time will tell.”
They went on deck.
The moon had not risen yet, and the island lay like a humped shadow in the starlight. To seaward the anchor light of the Natchez showed a yellow point, and from the beach came the lullaby of little waves falling on the sand.
“Now if it wasn’t these days,” said Satan, “I’d be in two minds about putting out straight now, rather than lyin’ all night by that feller Cleary.”
“What do you mean by these days?”
“Well, in the old throat-cuttin’ days I reckon Cleary would have gone through us, sunk the old Sarah, and taken me aboard his hooker with a gun at my head to make me show him the way to the wreck; but things is different now. Fellers are afraid of the law. Cark’s mortally afraid of the law, so’s Cleary.”
“What time do you start tomorrow?”
“After sun-up, if the wind holds.”
“It will be a joke if we find Carquinez at the reef. What will he say, do you think?”
“Cark? Oh, he’ll not mind. There ain’t no shame in Cark. He’ll have broke his contrac’ by not goin’ to Havana, he’ll stand proved to the eyes as a damn cheat. He won’t mind: the contrac’ not bein’ regular, the law can’t have him.”