The man who sat upon the rail shook his head. “Who knows!” he said. “If she is not the Sparto she may be the Playa Santiago, or the Cameron.”
Harper turned to Appleby with a little gesture of resignation. “You hear him. He’s talking,” he said. “Thirty miles more or less don’t count with them. If we don’t get in to-day, we may to-morrow, and if it’s next week nobody’s going to worry. They’ve nice business-like notions in their country.”
Rosendo laughed. “We not find the Sparto? Good! It is simple. She is farther on. We find her in two or three more hour.”
“Oh yes!” said Harper. “Still, what I want to know is, what’s going to happen if the gunboat comes along while we’re looking for her? I’ve a notion it might mean a white wall and a firing party.”
Rosendo shrugged his shoulders, and Appleby glanced towards the east. There was a bank of cloud in that quarter, but the sky above it was a pale luminescent blue. Then he looked astern, and saw the white tops of the seas heave against the darkness, for it was blowing fresh from the north. The “Ventura,” rolling lazily, was running before it with only her boom-foresail and two jibs set, but now and then the crest of a sea that surged past lapped her rail.
“Wouldn’t she stand more sail?” he said.
“Oh yes!” said Harper, pointing to the mainsail which lay loose beneath the big boom that swung, banging a little, above them. “It’s there ready. Still, it will be ’most three hours yet before there’s water in, and if the gunboat came along I’d sooner be here, where I’ve room to run, than jammed right up between her and a lee shore. If I was sure that was the high ground behind Point Sparto I’d feel considerably happier.”
They rolled on awhile, and then a half-moon sailed up. The sea changed to flashing silver, and Harper, leaving the wheel to Rosendo, went up the foremast hoops and swung perched on the cross-trees, black against the night. He came down by and by, and there was relief in his voice.
“That’s the Point sure enough! We’ll have the mainsail on her, boys,” he said.
The men came aft in haste. There was a rattle of blocks, and Appleby bent his back among the rest, while the folds of dusky canvas rose thrashing up the mast. They swelled into shape and became at rest, while the schooner, slanting over suddenly, put on speed, and drove away towards the land with a great frothing beneath her rail. She rolled little now, but there was a thud when her bows went down and the spray whirled half the height of her foresail. Appleby felt the exhilaration of swift motion, and his pulses throbbed a trifle faster as he watched the great breadths of canvas that gleamed silver now sway athwart the blue, and the froth swirl past the slender strip of hull that was dwarfed by comparison beneath them. The “Ventura” was very fast, but she could not compete with steam; and he noticed that Harper, who had taken the helm again, every now and then glanced over the rail. He appeared to be staring persistently towards one quarter of the horizon.