“If you’ll come with me, sir, down to the wharf, I’ll show you the boat now,” he said, when they had discussed the matter and threshed it out thoroughly.
He rose, bid good-day to his friend Fountain, and Lestrange followed him, carrying the brown-paper box in his hand.
O’Sullivan’s Wharf was not far away. A tall Cape Horner that looked almost a twin sister of the ill-fated Northumberland was discharging iron, and astern of her, graceful as a dream, with snow-white decks, lay the Raratonga discharging copra.
“That’s the boat,” said Stannistreet; “cargo nearly all out. How does she strike your fancy?”
“I’ll take her,” said Lestrange, “cost what it will.”
CHAPTER IV
DUE SOUTH
It was on the 10th of May, so quickly did things move under the supervision of the bedridden captain, that the Raratonga, with Lestrange on board, cleared the Golden Gates, and made south, heeling to a ten-knot breeze.
There is no mode of travel to be compared to your sailing-ship. In a great ship, if you have ever made a voyage in one, the vast spaces of canvas, the sky-high spars, the finesse with which the wind is met and taken advantage of, will form a memory never to be blotted out.