"Here or from the islands,—Cape Verde, the Canaries, or the Azores; here for the most part. You may go below, if you want, Hunter."
The man went, frequently pausing to look over his shoulder at the coast, glimpses of which could now be caught from the deck between the rolls.
After a brief consultation, the captain and the mate followed Hunter, and went aft to consult the chart. As they passed along the deck, they noted that all hands were much excited. These men, used as they were to the sea, had been fishermen of the purely local sort, and it was doubtful if any one of them save Gonzague had ever before been out of sight of the high land of his native place; and here they were, in view of a strange country where the people spoke outlandish jabber, and, for all they knew to the contrary, went about in toggery as ridiculous as that of the Chinese laundrymen at Green's Landing. Discussion became all the more heated when Hunter came down and told them that the land was one of the countless possessions belonging to the "Portigee king." Frequent appeals were made to Gonzague, who had descended, and was the centre of an excited group. As Tab remarked, it was a sight worth remembering to see these self-contained New Englanders in such a state.
Down below, Jack and Tab held a brief colloquy over the chart. They calculated, if the wind held, to make the Straits at nightfall, and run through by the aid of the lights on Cape Spartel and Tariffa. Having settled this point, they went on deck and had the course changed slightly.
"By Jumbo!" cried Jerry, banging his fist on the deck as he stood in the cockpit, "by Jumbo, I can't sleep a wink with this land in sight. Portugal, too! By Jove, it's all very fine," he ran on, "for a blasé old globe-trotter like you to keep cool, but I'm fair dry with it all."
Jack laughed, and reminded his friend of having lived in England and France, and of having traveled not a little in northern Europe.
"Pooh!" sniffed Tab. "That's not really doing anything; everybody does that. And to think," he burst out, "that we brought ourselves! God bless me, Jacko, I little thought when you crammed me with navigation in vacation days aboard the old Luna that I'd ever use it all; really, that is, as we have used it these three weeks past."
"Well, I hope you're duly grateful," laughed Jack. "It may prove a source of bread and butter if you're ever stranded."
All that day the Merle ran along gallantly over the bright seas, occasionally passing ships of different nationalities bound in or out of the Straits. At sundown, although the bold coast of Morocco was not yet in sight, a lookout was sent aloft to watch for the light on Cape Spartel.
At a little before nine o'clock in the evening, the breeze had so died down that the yacht hardly had steerage-way. Jack was asleep below; Tab had charge of the deck. What air there was was soft and warm. It had hauled around a couple of points against the sun, and was now fragrant with a faint tellurian odor, which would have been imperceptible to a landsman, but which was full of meaning to those who follow the sea. Overhead the great stars blazed in lustrous serenity. Their images kept appearing and vanishing on the now smooth and oily surface of the restless sea. The only sounds were those of the water and the cordage,—the sudden spanking of a big wave under the counter as the yacht flung her nose starward; the occasional crashing of the great booms and traveler-blocks as she righted suddenly after a heavy roll to port or a lurch to starboard; the pattering of the reef-points against the canvas; and the sharp reports made by the slatting of the lazy-jacks against the sails.