I must have managed to fall asleep, for I have just been awakened by a noise—an unusual noise, such as I have not hitherto heard on board the schooner.
Day begins to peer through the glass of my port-hole, which is turned towards the east. I look at my watch. It is half-past four.
The first thing I wonder is, whether the Ebba has resumed her voyage.
No, I am certain she has not, either by sail, or by her motor. The sea is as calm at sunrise as it was at sunset. If the Ebba has been going ahead while I slept, she is at any rate, stationary now.
The noise to which I referred, is caused by men hurrying to and fro on deck—by men heavily laden. I fancy I can also hear a similar noise in the hold beneath my cabin floor, the entrance to which is situated abaft the foremast. I also feel that something is scraping against the schooner’s hull. Have boats come alongside? Are the crew engaged in loading or unloading merchandise?
And yet we cannot possibly have reached our journey’s end. The Count d’Artigas said that we should not reach our destination till this afternoon. Now, I repeat, she was, last night, fully fifty or sixty miles from the nearest land, the group of the Bermudas. That she could have returned westward, and can be in proximity to the American coast, is inadmissible, in view of the distance. Moreover, I have reason to believe that the Ebba has remained stationary all night. Before I fell asleep, I know she had stopped, and I now know that she is not moving.
However, I shall see when I am allowed to go on deck. My cabin door is still bolted, I find on trying it; but I do not think they are likely to keep me here when broad daylight is on.
An hour goes by, and it gradually gets lighter. I look out of my porthole. The ocean is covered by a mist, which the first rays of the sun will speedily disperse.
I can, however, see for a half a mile, and if the three-masted merchantman is not visible, it is probably because she is lying off the other, or port, side of the Ebba.
Presently I hear a key turned in my door, and the bolts drawn. I push the door open and clamber up the iron ladder to the deck, just as the men are battening down the cover of the hold.