There had been no definite orders given to anybody aboard the Brandt, yet it was known to all that there was something on foot for the night. The let-up in the work of the day indicated that; furthermore, there was an air of mystery, of something impending, throughout the craft, that was felt and understood.
With the coming of night there rose up a mist from the surface of the water that dimmed the vision, though the stars showed clear in the sky. A thin fog gave an indefiniteness to the shore lines and made distant lights here and there twinkle vaguely.
The four vessels, the Brandt leading, sailed eastward as night fell, passing through the strait across the head of Tangier Sound. Jim Adams held the wheel and Haley gave orders to the crew, trimming the sails or easing off as the course varied.
Jim Adams, evidently glorying in the adventure, which defied the law that he despised, noted the points along the course with a series of chuckles.
“There’s old Sharkfin,” he called jubilantly, as the gleam from the lighthouse on the shoal of that name showed ahead. “We just goes east-no’th-east, sah, after we leave old Sharkfin Shoal a half mile to the eastward, and then we goes up between Nanticoke Point Spit and Clay Island Shoal like walkin’ up a meetin’ house aisle.”
Haley gazed ahead through the light mist.
“I’ve only been up the Nanticoke twice,” he said. “There’s buoys, I know, for some ten miles up, and then it takes a native born to find the rest of the way.”
Jim Adams chuckled. “I don’ need ’em,” he said, “not ’round this river. I can feel my way up; an’ they can paint the spars all black and it wouldn’t fool me, not a bit.”
Passing the lighthouse and leaving it astern some miles, the four bug-eyes took a more northerly course, entering the river. They carried no lights, and the cabin and forecastle lamps had been put out, so that no gleam showed from the ports. A fresh breeze from the west, blowing almost directly across the river, carried them up at a fair clip.
“There’s land close aboard, off the starboard,” said Haley, after they had gone some three miles up.