As the boat sailed quietly on and nothing happened, his mind became more at ease. He wondered whether he should awaken his companions. After a moment’s thought he decided this would be unwise. To awaken them would be to add to their period of anxiety. Nothing could be done until they came to some land.
“Besides,” he told himself, “wakened suddenly from sleep, they may speak aloud and betray our presence. That might bring disaster. If these are bad men our chances of escape on land will be much greater.”
So he sat there in silent meditation, sensing the lift and fall of the boat, catching the toss and creak of the masts and wondering whither they were bound.
Oddly enough, he thought again of the monkey and his diamond set band of gold.
“Now surely,” he told himself, “we will never see him again.”
Passing strange it was to be riding thus, alone save for two sleeping companions; and those friends for but an hour; sailing over waters he had never before sailed to some land he had never seen. The rain had ceased. The moon was out. It shone upon a tossing sea.
More than four hundred years before another small craft had sailed these waters in the light of that moon. It was upon the shores of Haiti that Columbus established his first colony. For a time Johnny amused himself by imagining that he was Columbus sitting in his berth, waiting for the sound of a dropping anchor.
“It must have been wonderful,” he told himself. “The first white man to see these shores.”
Of a sudden, as he sat there thinking, there came a sharp command from the stern, then another and yet another.
“Surely that must awaken them.” He looked at his companions as he stiffened in preparation for an emergency.