Then the moon began to rise from beyond the Bahamas, a vast, full moon, with the sea seeming to cling to her lower limb as she freed herself. Dusky, at first, she paled as she rose, and now, in her light, the palms of the island and the coral beach showed clear.
Palm Island is a scrub of cactus and bay cedar bushes, half a mile long and quarter of a mile broad, with not more than forty trees. Crabs and turtles and gulls are its only visitors, and desolation sits there visible and naked. But in the moonlight, on a night like this and seen from the sea, it is fairyland—storyland.
Ratcliffe, his mind full of pirates and bucaneers, Spaniards and plate-ships, found himself wondering if men had ever been marooned here, if Morgan and Van Horn and all that crowd had ever had dealings on that beach, and what the moon could tell about it all if she could remember and speak. He was thinking this when the creak of block and cordage struck his ear, and past the stern of the Dryad came gliding the fore canvas of a small vessel, a thing that seemed no larger than a fishing boat.
She had been creeping in from the sea unnoticed by them as they talked. Skelton had gone below without sighting her, and she was so close that the slap of her bow-wash came clearly as she passed.
He watched her gliding shoreward like a phantom, and then across the water came a voice, shrill as the voice of a bird:
“Seven fathom!”
And on top of that another voice:
“Let go!”
The rumble—tumble—tumble—of an anchor chain followed, and then the silence of the night closed in, broken only by the far-off wash of the waves on the beach.
This ghost of the sea fascinated Ratcliffe. He could see her now riding at anchor against the palms and bay cedars of the island.