When he was alone, Captain Bent again arranged his cards on the table. He always found it easier to think and plan while he played solitaire.
He went leisurely to the bridge some hours later.
Arrowsic was entering harbor.
Evening was merging into night. Tall lighthouses held aloft their steady beacons; revolving lanterns flashed white and red.
Looking over the end of the bridge, Captain Bent inspected. His orders had been carefully carried out. The ancient hooker had been made fast to the port beam of the cutter. In proceeding to her berth the Arrowsic offered her starboard side to observation from the water-front wharves. The schooner was not wholly concealed under the protecting wing, of course, but she was not patently advertised, to say the least. The visible tangle of her tophamper seen past the cutter’s masts and funnel, put her into the class of cripples brought to port by the Arrowsic in the ordinary course of salvage.
Disclosed by his binnacle lamp, Captain Coombs paced his quarter-deck alone. None of his crew was in sight. The closed hatch of the aft companionway was evidence that the mother and her brood were cooped below.
The two captains neither saluted nor passed speech.
The Arrowsic was made fast at the pier head and the schooner was warped into the dock and was laid alongside the wharf.
“Mr. Todd, put our whole crew at the work of discharging cargo from that schooner,” directed Captain Bent. “Have those cases stacked neatly on the wharf. Set the master-at-arms with a detail to keep guard till relieved. Notify me when the cargo is on the wharf.”
Commands instead of union hours are observed by a coast-guard crew.