"Guess it's your funeral—not mine," he replied. "Get busy!"
Cain proceeded to get busy. His first step was to send for the Bronx City's wireless operator.
As soon as the fictitious message announcing the ramming and sinking of the Alerte had been sent out, Cain ordered the operator below, locked the door of the wireless cabin, and placed an armed guard outside.
"Gee! Guess you're some lineal descendant of Ananias, Cap'n!" exclaimed the master of the Bronx City admiringly. "Reckon you'd make a pile in Wall Street in next to no time."
Cain's next step was to place Pengelly with five men in charge of the Bronx City, and to order the chief and second officers of the latter on board the Alerte.
"Just as a matter of form, Cap'n Adams," he remarked: "it will save a heavy strain on your steward's department.... Now, Mr. Pengelly, keep station four cables astern of me, if you please; speed twelve knots. Under no consideration, should we sight another craft, will the Bronx City communicate."
The pirate captain returned to the Alerte. If the misleading wireless message "went down," then the Alerte had yet another lease of life and activity. The possible presence of British and foreign warships off the Rio del Oro was a danger which he fully appreciated. Once the coast was clear of that type of craft he could prey on merchantmen during the next few weeks with comparative impunity. He was very keen to snap up the hitherto much-advertised Candide.
He felt considerably elated over the Bronx City affair. His magnanimity would be an asset in his favour. His discrimination in refusing to plunder a cargo carried under the Stars and Stripes would show that he was not a wild dog at large. Altogether, he was very pleased with himself.
For the rest of the day the Alerte, with the Bronx City keeping demurely in her wake, kept a southerly course. As night fell she stood in towards the coast, sighting land soon after dawn. Ahead lay the Bahia Arenas, an enclosed anchorage nearly ten miles in length and averaging one in breadth, with an extreme depth of fourteen fathoms. Separated from the Atlantic by a long low, sandy island, it received the Faltuba River, a fairly deep stream meandering between banks of mangroves and bounded for miles by miasmic swamps.
Years ago the Portuguese had attempted to convert Bahia Arenas into a commercial port. They built a stone fort, wharves and huts. The experiment was a failure. They had reckoned without the deadly climate. It was healthy enough for vessels lying at anchor in the sandy bay, but no European could for any length of time withstand the pestilential air that rose from the mangroves. The fort fell into decay, the wharves rotted. When in course of time the French took over the country between Cape Blanco and British Gambia, they sedulously avoided any scheme to open out the Faltuba River, and consequently no shipping had occasion to use Bahia Arenas for commercial purposes.