“Why, Go’ bless my soul, she’s anchored!” cried Satan. “Derelic’ and anchored. The people must have got away in a boat or suthin’. There’s not a sign of them. Port—hard—port—as you were—steady—so!”
He ran to let go the halyards.
Another anchor had been bent on to some spare chain. It was heaved over, and the Sarah came up to it, swinging less than fifty yards from the stranger. She was a picture, a forty-ton fishing yawl, white painted, gracile as a fish, dismasted, abandoned, and swinging to a taut anchor chain; beyond her and the emerald of the lagoon lay the great stretch of sands, running due south, blanketing to the heat and showing ponds of aquamarine and storms of gulls.
The anchor down, Satan stood with his eyes fixed on his prey; Jude too. They seemed considering her as a butcher might consider a carcass before he cut it up.
“Aren’t you going to board her?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Have you ever seen a dead b’ar?” asked Satan. “Sometimes a b’ar isn’t as dead as he looks, and sometimes a derelic’ isn’t as empty as it looks. It’s a common thing for men on the Florida coast to hide in a driftin’ canoe and rise up and laugh at them that come out to collect it. I can’t make out that anchor chain bein’ down, and I’ll just give them one hour whiles we have dinner.”
When they came on deck again after the meal, they dropped the dinghy, and the three of them put off for the derelict.
She must have been dismasted outside the sands, for not a spar lay in the water alongside,—dismasted and driven over by a big wave, her crew clinging to her. On the bow was her name, Haliotis. They tied up and scrambled on board. The deck ran flush fore and aft. The wheel looked all right, but was jammed and immovable; the binnacle glass was smashed.
Satan stood, whistling and looking about him. Then he dived below, followed by the others. The cabin had been left in good order. It was a bit over-gilded and decorated for a plain man’s taste, but everything was of the best, and a hanging lamp of solid brass still swung over the center-table. The walls were of bird’s-eye maple, the cushions of the best blue cloth, and the fittings of the tiny sleeping cabins to match.
There was plenty of stuff lying about,—books, clothes, boots. The people had evidently put off in a hurry, not caring much what they took as long as they got away. Perhaps they had taken advantage of a passing steamer.