CHAPTER VII
MANGROVE CREEK
There was not a ripple on the sea when the Enchantress, steaming slowly, closed with the coast. The glittering water broke with a drowsy murmur at her bows and turned from silver to a deep blue in the shadow of the hull; her wake was marked by silky whirls on the back of the swell. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, the sea flung back a dazzling light, and Grahame's eyes ached as he searched the approaching land with his glasses.
Far back, blue mountains loomed through haze and the foreground was blurred and dim. One could not tell where the low expanse began or ended, though a broad, dark fringe, which Grahame knew was forest, conveyed some idea of distance. In one or two spots, a streak of white indicated surf upon a point, but the picture was flooded with a glare in which separate objects lost distinctness. Blue and gray and silver melted into one another without form or salient line.
Grahame put down the glasses and turned to the seaman near him. Miguel was getting old, but his tall figure was strong, and he stood, finely posed, with a brown hand on the wheel. His face was rugged, but he had clear, blue eyes that met one with a curious child-like gaze. He was barefooted and his thin cotton trousers and canvas jacket were spotlessly clean, though Grahame imagined he had made the latter out of a piece of old awning they had meant to throw away.
"You come from the Canaries, don't you, Miguel?" Grahame asked in Castilian. "It is not so hot there."
"From San Sebastian, señor, where the trade-breeze blows and the date-palms grow. My house stands among the tuna-figs beside the mule-track to the mountains."
"Then you have a house? Who takes care of it while you are away?"
"My señora. She packs the tomatoes they send to England. It is hard work and one earns a peseta a day."
"Then why did you leave her?" Grahame asked, for he knew that a peseta, which is equal to about twenty cents, will not buy much of the coarse maize-flour the Canary peasants live upon.
"There came a great tempest, and when my three boats were wrecked something must be done. My sons were drawn for the navy; they had no money to send. For years, señor, I was captain of a schooner fishing bacalao on the African coast, and when I came home to catch tunny for the Italian factory things went very well. Then the gale swept down from the peaks one night and in the morning the boats were matchwood on the reef."