CHAPTER XVII
LONE REEF
It was the morning of the third day out, somewhere about four o’clock. The moon had set, and the Sarah was lifting against a gentle head sea, boosting the foam from her bows under the light of a million stars.
Satan was at the wheel, Jude below in her hammock, and Ratcliffe at the weather rail, close to Satan. He was leaning over watching the water,—gouts and lines of star-shot foam, planes of ebony blackness, and now and then, deep down, the bloom of phosphorus like the life in the heart of a black opal.
“What time do you reckon we’ll strike the reef?” asked Ratcliffe.
“We’re right on to it now,” replied Satan, “and if it wasn’t more’n a five-knot breeze I’d heave her to.”
“You aren’t afraid of running on it?”
“Lord, no! There’s no smell of it yet.”
“You mean to say you could smell it?”
“Waal,” said Satan, “I don’t know if it’s rightly smell or hearin’ or what, but I’d know it, even with the wind as she is. I reckon it’s maybe the water. Shoal water smells different from deep, and it’s shoal water right up from four miles to Lone. Feels different too.”