Again the dingy Malay grinned and shook his white head, which looked as if it had been snowed over, and, pointing shoreward, to indicate that he must return, cast off the tow-line, after which his boat, that bobbed up and down like a cork, was rapidly dropped astern.
The wind was now becoming light, and, with Morley and Heriot stripped to their shirt-sleeves, pulling ahead in the quarter-boat, and Mr. Foster in her bow, sounding carefully every minute with hand-lead, the ship was steered by the captain in person towards the creek, the entrance of which was seen to open plainly enough under the brow of the cliff, at the base of which some breakers were boiling white upon a ridge of rock, "like the devil's own milk," as Noah said, adding:
"I wonder why the deuce that old fellow wouldn't come aboard? I hope it isn't a snare, this kind inwitation to anchor in a creek."
"A snare, Noah?" repeated Bartelot.
"'Cause, sir, he has the look of an old wrecker, to my mind."
A dead calm soon fell upon the land and sea, and from the square yards of the Hermione, her fore and maincourse, and a jury main-topsail, hung down straight and motionless, till they were hauled up prior to furling, as she glided slowly, and with almost imperceptible motion, through the narrow gut of the creek.
"Leather strip—ten fathoms; red rag—seven fathoms; seven again; white rag—five fathoms," Foster kept repeating from time to time, as he hove the hand-line from the bow of the leading boat. Bartelot and Morrison were also in it, and pulling with all their strength, for they had the kedge anchors and a couple of strong Manilla warps with them.
Beyond its narrow entrance, which was almost shrouded in mangroves, that brushed the ship's channels, the creek opened out into a tiny bay, or oval-shaped basin, and there, before sunset had beamed its red farewell upon the summit of the rocks, the Hermione, with her courses hauled, her jury topsail-yards lowered upon the cap, her spanker brailed up, and her jib and stay-sails stowed away, was moored quietly, as if in the middle of a dock, by two warps, one at the stem and the other at the stern, both being carried ashore to her kedge anchors, which were embedded in the banks, among the mangroves and other luxuriant vegetation that grew down to the water's edge.
"From here to Port Louis we have a run of about seven hundred odd miles," said Captain Phillips; "the season is fine; but we shall fall to our work by daybreak to-morrow—fill the tank—overhaul the fore rigging, have it tarred down and rattled anew in some parts, and then be off with the first breeze of wind, as I don't fancy the Madagascar fever."
"And this creek, with its mangroves dipping in the slimy ooze, seems just the place to catch it," said Tom Bartelot.