“Let those niggers knock off sweeping for the present, and send them below. And as soon as they are there and you have clapped the hatches on—noiselessly, mind—let all hands set to work to muffle the sweeps with mats, old canvas, pads of oakum, or anything else that you can lay your hands upon. It is unfortunate that this was not thought of before; but it may not yet be too late.”
The negroes, grateful for this unexpected respite from their exhausting toil, and of course quite ignorant as to its cause, gladly tumbled below, and the gratings were carefully secured over them. Meanwhile the boatswain, with one hand, dived below, and in a short time the two men re-appeared with a load of miscellaneous stuff and some balls of spun-yarn; and all hands went diligently to work under Mendouca’s personal supervision, to muffle the sweeps, which was so effectually done that when, half-an-hour later, they were again manned, they worked with scarcely a sound beyond the rather heavy splash of their blades in the water. Meanwhile, during the progress of the muffling process—in which I had not offered to participate—I kept a keen watch upon the distant brig, taking an occasional squint at her through the night-glass when I thought it possible to do so without attracting Mendouca’s attention. I do not quite know what I expected to see, for of course I knew perfectly well that every eye in the brig might be steadfastly watching us, without our being able to detect any sign of such scrutiny; and I was moreover fully aware that should we have been discovered, and our character suspected, no visible indication of such discovery or suspicion would be permitted to reveal itself to our eyes; and the same studied concealment would equally apply to the preparations for any investigation that they might be moved to undertake. Still, I thought it just barely possible that by maintaining a strict watch I might chance to detect some sign of alertness on board the brig, if she were indeed the Barracouta, as I strongly suspected. Nor was I disappointed, for I did at length detect such an indication, not on board the brig herself, but at some considerable distance from her, and immediately under the slender crescent of the setting moon, where, while sweeping the surface of the water, moved by some vague instinct, I caught two faint momentary flashes of dim orange radiance that to me had very much the appearance of reflected moonlight glancing off the wet blades of oars. And if this were so it meant that we had been seen, our character very shrewdly suspected—most probably from the steady plying of the sweeps for no more apparently urgent reason than that we were becalmed—and that a surprise attack was about to be attempted from the very quarter where, under the circumstances, it was least likely to be looked for, namely, straight ahead. Of course what I had seen might merely have been a ray of moonlight glancing off the wet body of a porpoise, a whale, or some other sea creature risen to the surface to breathe; but it had so much the appearance of the momentary flash of oars that I was loath to believe it anything else. Assuming it to be what I hoped, my cue was now of course to distract attention as much as possible from that part of the ocean that lay immediately ahead of us; and this could not be better done than by concentrating it upon the brig, which now lay practically abeam of us, a short three miles away. I therefore—no longer surreptitiously but ostentatiously—again brought the night-glass to bear upon her, and allowed myself to be found thus when Mendouca came aft, after having personally superintended the muffling of the sweeps and the putting of them in motion again.
“Well,” he said, as he rejoined me, “have you not yet been able to satisfy yourself as to the character of that brig?”
“No,” said I; “but, whatever she is, they all seem to be asleep on board her. If she is a slaver, her skipper has more care and consideration for his property than you have, for he at least allows his slaves to rest at night.”
“That is quite patent to us all,” answered Mendouca drily. “But then, you know, he may not be running short of food and water, as we are. Or—he may not be a slaver.”
“Of course,” I assented, with the best accent of indifference that I could assume. “But, slaver or no slaver, I have not been able to detect a sign of life on board that brig for the last half-hour, or indeed from the moment when I first began to watch her. I can make out the faint light of her binnacle lamps, and that is all. But the fact of their being allowed to continue shining would seem to argue, to my mind at least, that, be they what they may, they have no reason for attempting to conceal their presence from us. If you feel differently toward them I think you would do well to extinguish your binnacle lights for awhile; the helmsman can steer equally well by a star, of which there are plenty to choose from.”
“Yes, of course; you are right,” he assented hastily; “there can be no harm in doing that.”
And going to the binnacle, he glanced into it, saw that the ship was heading on the course he had last set for her, directed the helmsman to choose a star to steer by, and then himself carefully withdrew the lamps and extinguished them.