"It's your risk and not the first time I've broken rules. I guess I can keep her off the ground. We'll get busy presently and heave the hatches off. The B.F. cases are right on top."
Adam nodded, and beckoned Kit when the captain went away. "You haven't been in the Santa Marta lagoon yet. Stand by and watch the soundings and compass while Mayne takes her across the shoals. You may find it useful to know the channel."
Kit understood. Malaria and other fevers are common on low-lying belts of the Caribbean coast and skippers and mates fall sick. Moreover, the Rio Negro did not always load at the regular ports. Sometimes she crept into mangrove-fringed lagoons, and sometimes stopped at lonely beaches and sent loaded boats ashore when her captain saw the gleam of signal lights.
When it was getting dark, Kit and Adam went to the bridge and the former noted that his uncle breathed rather hard and seized the rails firmly as he climbed the ladder. The red glow of sunset had faded behind the high land and a gray haze spread across the swampy shore, but the water shone with pale reflections. On one side, a long, dingy smear floated across the sky. It did not move and Kit thought it had come from the funnel of a steamer whose engineer had afterwards cleaned his fires. Captain Mayne studied the fleecy trail with his glasses.
"I don't know if that's a coffee-boat going north; I can't make out her hull against the land," he said. "Sometimes there's a guarda-costa hanging round the point."
"Better take no chances," Adam replied, glancing at the Rio Negro's funnel, from which a faint plume of vapor floated.
Mayne signed to the quartermaster in the pilot house and the bows swung round. Half an hour afterwards, he rang his telegraph and the clang of engines died away while the throb of the propeller stopped. In what seemed an unnatural silence, a few barefooted deck-hands began to move about, and one stood on the forecastle, where his dark figure cut against the shining sea. The rest went aft with a line the other held, and when Mayne raised his hand there was a splash as the deep-sea lead plunged. A man aft called the depth while he gathered up the line, and Mayne beckoned another, who climbed to a little platform outside the bridge and fastened a strap round his waist.
"We're on the Santa Marta shelf, but I'm four miles off the course I set," Mayne remarked. "I want to work out the angle from the first bearing I got."
Kit went with him into the chart-room, for he knew something about navigation. They had taught him the principles of land-surveying at the agricultural college, and this had made his studies easier. When he came back the moon was getting bright, but the haze had thickened on the low ground and the heights behind had faded to a vague, formless blur. The trail of smoke had vanished, there was no wind, and the smooth swell broke against the bows with a monotonous dull roar as the Rio Negro went on. She was alone on the heaving water and steaming slowly, but the noise of her progress carried far. By and by a light twinkled ahead, leaped up into a steady glow that lasted for some minutes, and then went out.
"That's a relief," remarked Adam, who had struck a match and studied his watch. "The ground's clear and Don Hernando has somebody he can trust waiting at the lagoon. You can let her go ahead, Captain."