CHAPTER III
EL FARISH
On the stealthy-looking little grey steamship at anchor under the obscure stars not even a riding-light was visible. But she was close to the desolate coast, well out of the way of all respectable traffic. And a solitary figure, squatted in the bows, pipe in mouth, pannikin of rum within easy reach, was keeping a perfunctory anchor-watch, staring idly seaward so that he saw nothing of a tiny light which flashed three times from the shore in belated response to a similar signal from a screened port in the poop-cabin.
But for him, the decks were deserted. From the crew's quarters came frequent outbursts of ribald talk and uproarious laughter, the odour of food, the clank and clatter of tin-ware empty or full. The crew were at supper and satisfied for the present.
From the companion-hatch on the poop four soundless shadows emerged. Two of them were carrying cautiously a long, flat fabric which they in a moment or two converted into a fourteen-foot canvas boat. These two lowered that overside. One of the others, a bundle in hand, slipped easily down into it by means of a rope made fast to a stanchion. The last, cursing under his breath, was helped over the rail, with one foot in a loop of the same line, by the two remaining on deck.
Sallie, safely seated in the cockleshell below, laid a pair of muffled oars in the rowlocks and pushed quietly off from under the dripping overhang of the ship. Captain Dove, crouching in its stern, whispered curt directions to her. She could just see Reuben Yoxall and Jasper Slyne standing side by side at the steamer's taffrail, and then the black bulk of the Olive Branch became merged in the blacker water.
Once out of earshot of the ship, she set to rowing in earnest, a strong, steady stroke, like one well accustomed to that exercise; and Captain Dove, with an eye cocked at a helpful star twinkling dimly through the heat-haze, kept her heading straight for the shore. The boom of the breakers soon began to grow louder, but, even when it had become almost deafening, she did not look round. They had got into broken water and it was taking her all her time to handle the oars.
She was breathless and all but exhausted before they at length shot dizzily out of the wild turmoil of the surf into a tranquil, land-locked lagoon, concealed from seaward by a long sand-spit, which served it as a breakwater in such smooth weather.
"Way enough," said the old man gruffly, and, as Sallie shipped her oars, the light craft lost speed. Presently, its prow took the sand, and at last they were free of the ominous, phosphorescent black fins which had followed them from where they had left the ship.