In the west, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, the receding stern-light of an Italian steamship glimmered faintly. Taberman watched it long after it kept sinking out of sight and again rising in the weltering seas, and until it at last vanished as if quenched. He was following out certain grim speculations as to the feelings of a forsaken swimmer who should watch this star of his hope moving relentlessly away into the west, grower fainter each time it emerged from the waves, when—
"Light ho!" shouted the lookout from the darkness aloft. "There's—light; 'bout—point—off—starb'd—bow!"
"What kind?" hailed Jerry from the deck, straining his eyes to where, a dim blot against the stars, the figure of the lookout could be discerned standing by the rigging on the cross-trees.
"Fixed white, red flash," called the man.
"All right," shouted Jerry; and added in his ordinary tone of command to the hands on deck: "Lay along, now! Trim in main-sheet a bit—well enough. Now then, fore and head sheets. Good. That'll do.—We want to get what air there is," he added to himself.
Although the wind was slight, yet about the Straits is always a strongish set of current. The surface current flows into the Mediterranean continuously, and it kept setting the Merle steadily ahead. When Taberman judged the light to be no more than five or six knots away, he sent below to rouse the captain, who was asleep. When Castleport came on deck, the bearing of the light was taken, the chart consulted, and a slight change made in the course. It was now calm, and the yacht, no longer steadied by the wind, rolled heavily.
"We ought to see it air up before long," remarked Jack, after a short silence. "It's so beastly calm now. When it's calm on one side of the Straits, it's always blowing on the other. An Italian sea captain told me there is always just so much air about here, and however much or little is on one side, the balance is always kicking about on the other."
"Then we'll take the sticks out of her, once we're through the Straits," Jerry responded with conviction.
As the schooner entered the Straits, the blue-black sky to the eastward became dimly albescent, and shortly a blood-red moon rose slowly behind the inky mass of Monkey Mountain. The huge pile of rock, the more impressive though the less famous of the Pillars of Hercules, loomed vast, mysterious, and perdurable in the soft darkness. The waves, as the face of the moon cleared, were lit with a gray light.