Martin’s passenger stood up, and shouted angrily a few words in a foreign tongue, which Martin could not understand. The man ceased rowing, and turned his head, and Martin recognised him as the foreign seaman whom he had seen a little while before asleep in the drifting craft. Next moment he swung his boat round and rowed rapidly towards the entrance of the repairing yard.
A few minutes later Martin landed his passenger at the foot of the stairs. The man seemed to be in too great a hurry even to thank him. He sped up the stairs and disappeared.
“I’ll have a little rest before I go back,” thought Martin.
He tied up the boat and strolled along by the edge of the repairing dock. Only one vessel lay there, a three-master brig without her mainmast, and it flashed into Martin’s memory that the waterman had told him of a Portugal ship that had come in for repairs.
“Is that a Portugal vessel?” he asked a man who was lounging near by.
“Ay, Portugal she is,” was the reply. “Dismasted by a Frenchman in the Channel. She’s not so foreign-looking as some Portugal ships I’ve seen, but her crew—why, bless your life, they’re as pretty a set of cut-throats as you’ve ever set eyes on.”
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
A BLOW IN THE DARK
Martin found himself to be taking a rather unusual interest in this Portugal ship. It was impossible in the dusk to see her lines clearly; indeed, she was lying so low in the dock that even in the daylight one could not have obtained a good view of her. And the shipwrights’ work being over for the day, there was nothing going on upon her deck.