The Further Adventures of Zorro, Part I
CHAPTER I.
LAND RATS AND WATER RATS.
Throughout a long summer day of more than a hundred years ago the high fog had obscured the flaming ball of sun, and the coast of Southern California had been bathed in a haze.
Then came the night, with indication of a drizzle that did not materialize. For the bank of fog suddenly was split as though with a sword, and the brilliant moon poured down, and the riven mist floated away to let the land be blessed with brilliance and the tossing sea dance in the silvery moonbeams.
Approaching the shore came a sinister vessel, craft of ill omen. She sailed slowly under a spare spread of canvas, as though fearing to reach her destination too soon, and her lights were not burning. The hiss of the waters from her bows was a lazy sort of hiss, but the more suggestive because of that. It was the playful hiss of a serpent always ready to become enraged. Her appearance betokened stealth and crime.
She was low, rakish, swift. No proper seaman commanded her, since her decks were foul and her sides badly in need of protecting paint. But her sailing gear was in perfect condition, and the man at her helm could have told that she answered to her rudder like a love-sick maiden to her swain.
Amidships stood her commander, one Barbados, a monstrous giant of a man with repugnant visage. Gigantic brass rings were in his mutilated ears. His eyes were pig-like—tiny, glittering, wholly evil. His great gnarled hands continually were forming themselves into brutish fists. He wore no shirt, no shoes. His chest and back were covered with thick, black, matted hair.
“By the saints!” he swore in a voice that drowned the slush of the waters against the vessel’s sides. “Sanchez! Fools and devils! Is it necessary to shout to the world our villainy? Look at that flag flapping against the mast! Three hours after set of sun, and the flag of the devil still flies! Discipline! Ha!”
“The flag!” Sanchez bellowed. There was no definite order given, but the man nearest the mast was quick to lower the flag. Sanchez looked back toward Barbados, and Barbados grunted and turned away to look toward the distant land.