For the first hour of their progress the land to windward merely presented the appearance of a black blur, indistinctly seen under the star-spangled indigo of the night sky; but by the end of that time something in the nature of outline began to reveal itself, while, half an hour later, a long tongue of land became distinctly visible broad on their weather bow, with two or three much smaller detached blotches rising out of the sea ahead. Standing up in the stern-sheets, Marshall scrutinised these appearances with the greatest care for several minutes; then, with a sigh of contentment, he sat down again.
“It is all right, Dick,” he said; “we have made a most excellent landfall. That long stretch of land yonder is Baru Island, and the small detached blots of blackness are the detached islets at its southernmost extremity which we saw marked on the chart. We must pass to leeward of them, lad, giving them a berth of at least a mile, because, if our chart is correct, there is a reef between us and them which we must avoid. If we can only get up abreast of those islets before the daylight comes I shall be satisfied, because we shall then be hidden from the sight of any fishing canoes which may happen to be outside Cartagena harbour; and, once inside Baru, I think we need not have the slightest fear of discovery. Moreover, I have an idea that we can make our way into the harbour from the back of Baru, without being obliged to go outside again, which will be a great advantage.”
“Have you formed any plan of action to be followed after we arrive at the back of the island?” demanded Dick.
“Well, no; I can’t say that I have,” answered Marshall. “My experience is that, in the case of expeditions of this kind, it is of little use to scheme very far ahead. I have found that the best plan is to trust to luck, and be guided entirely by circumstances. My object, of course, is to penetrate to the town of Cartagena itself, and there pick up all the news that I can get hold of relative to the movements of the plate ship, seeing her, if possible, and so acquainting myself with her build, rig, and general appearance, so that if by any chance she should sail in company with other ships I may know for certain which is the craft that we must single out for attack. It may be possible for us to go up the harbour in the longboat, although I do not regard such a thing as very likely; there would be too much risk in it, I think, to justify such an attempt, at least until all other schemes have failed; and we are not out now in quest of adventure, or to incur unnecessary risks, but to obtain information; the adventure may come later on.”
“It is more than likely that it will,” returned Dick, dryly; “for I cannot for the life of me see how we are to enter the town without exposing ourselves to very grave risk of discovery.”
“Oh, it may be done,” asserted Marshall, with far more confidence than Dick thought was justified by the occasion. “Cartagena has a population of several thousands, you know; and I do not suppose it is at all likely that everybody will know everybody else, even by sight; it will be very difficult for anybody to point to anybody else and say, with assured certainty, that he is a stranger who has no right to be there. But, of course, we shall not all enter the town; at least I do not at present contemplate anything so foolhardy. I shall attempt to get into the town alone, leaving the longboat snugly concealed but within easy reach, in case of the necessity for a rapid retreat arising; and you must keep your eyes open to guard against detection, and at the same time maintain a bright lookout for me, and be ready to come to my help, should I be hard pressed. Ah! there is the reef that I spoke of a little while ago; see there, broad off the weather bow; you can see the surf breaking upon it—and there is a small island right ahead of us. Keep her away, lad; up helm and let her go off a point. So! steady as you go; that ought to carry us clear of everything. And, thank God, there is the dawn coming; we shall just get nicely in before it grows light enough for anybody to see us.”
The longboat had by this time drawn close in with the land, the island of Baru looming up black and clear-cut to windward, with the islets and their adjacent reef, now known as Rosario Islands, a short quarter of a mile broad on the weather bow, and a clump of hills on the main beyond, just beginning to outline themselves sharply against the lightening sky behind them. Daylight and darkness come with a rush in those latitudes, and by the time that the Rosario Islands were abeam the eastern sky had paled from indigo to white that, even as one looked, became flushed with a most delicate and ethereal tint of blush rose, which in its turn warmed as rapidly to a tone of rich amber, against which a cluster of mangrove-bordered islands, occupying what looked like the embouchure of a river, suddenly revealed themselves a point or two on the weather bow. Like magic the amber tint spread itself right and left along the horizon and upward toward the zenith, to be pierced, the next moment, by a broad shaft of pure white light which shot upward far into the delicate azure, which was now flooding the heavens and drowning out the stars, one after the other. Then up shot another and another shaft of light, radiating from a point just below the horizon, like the spokes of a wheel. Suddenly a little layer of horizontal clouds, a few degrees above the mangrove tops, became visible, rose-red and gold-edged; and an instant later a spark of molten, palpitating gold flashed and blazed through the ebony-black mangrove branches, dazzling the eye and tipping the ripples with a long line of scintillating gold which stretched clear from the shore to the boat, flooding her and those in her with primrose light. Quickly the golden spark grew and brightened until, before one could draw breath a dozen times, it had expanded into the upper edge of a great throbbing, burning, golden disk, flooding land and sea with its golden radiance—and it was day. The sea changed from purple to a clear translucent green; the vegetation ashore, still black immediately under the sun, merged by a thousand subtle gradations, right and left, into olive-green of every imaginable tint, and finally into a delicate rosy grey in the extreme distance; a multitude of trivial details of outline and contour, tree and rock, suddenly leapt into distinctness, a flock of pelicans rose from among the cluster of islands inshore and went flapping heavily and solemnly out to seaward; the dorsal fin of a shark drifted lazily past the boat—and the full extent of the bight behind the island of Baru swept suddenly into view.
“Just in time,” exclaimed Marshall, with a sigh of relief, as he rose and stretched himself. “Round with her, lad, and head her up the bight while the wind lasts. It will be a flat calm here in half an hour from now.”
“I hope not,” said Dick, “for this bight is quite twelve miles long, by the look of it, and it will be no joke for four of us to be obliged to pull this heavy boat the greater part of that distance.”
“There will be no need,” said Marshall. “We are not in such a desperate hurry as that amounts to. Take the boat close in under the shore of the island, and when the wind fails us we will anchor and have breakfast. The calm will probably last no longer than about an hour; then will come the sea breeze, which, I should say, from the trend of the coast just here, will probably draw right up the bight, and be a fair wind for us.”