"Here's a chance for a feller to make good," cried a Conch to a stout German sailor called Heldron: "Reward fer old man Sanches' boy who run off to sea in one o' them fruit-ships," and he read from an old paper as he lay in his bunk during the watch below.
"I know dot poy: he pad poy; but him fader big sight worse," said the German. "He make de worst seegar in Key West."
"Well, if I was a mate o' a ship I might make good on that, hey?" said Sam.
"Blamed sight easier'n spongin', to catch a little boy," said another; "but I hear the old man is going to the eastward—heard of something down Fortune Island way."
And the conversation turned to business, while the mate smoked on in silence. That night they were speeding across the Florida Channel in spite of the threatening weather and heavy sea. By morning they were many miles off shore, and gradually had been forced to slow down. The wind, while now slacking up and becoming heavy with moisture and warmth, had been strong enough during the night to make the Sea-Horse shorten down to keep from forcing too heavily into the high, rolling sea.
It was dirty weather in the Gulf Stream. The flying scud streamed away to the northwest in little whirling bits of vapour. They tore along with the speed of an express train in a direction which seemed at a sharp angle to the heavy, steel-blue bank which swept in a mighty and majestic semicircle across the southern sky. High overhead the sky had a distant appearance, something peculiar and weird, for the storm-centre was advancing northward and gathering all straying moisture in its grasp. It made dark streaks in the heavens at a distance above the sea, and rays of the morning sun shone upon them with a brassy glare, as though the whole universe was incased in a colossal dome which darkened near the horizon. It seemed to absorb the failing light less and less as the line of vision rose toward the zenith.
With a line of reef-points tied in from the second hoop on the mainsail to the cringle on the leach, which raised only a couple of fathoms in the air, the Sea-Horse lay upon the starboard tack. A bit of staysail forward hauled to the mast held her steady as she breasted the sea, staggering to leeward with the heave that, increasing, told of a mighty power behind it. The combing crests rolled white with a dull, rattling snore, and the beautiful blue colour of the warm stream was paling into a dark lead.
The sloop would throw her forefoot high in the air as the rolling crests would strike and sweep from under the now almost logy hulk. The brown of the copper-painted under-body showed in strong contrast to the dirty white above. Then she would drop with a sidewise, twisting motion, a little bow-foremost into the trough, and back her snub nose away from the onrushing hill before it, which sometimes would burst and smother her out of sight to the mast in a storm of flying water. Then she would drop again, sidewise and forward down the incline, the rush of foam on the decks sweeping through the side ports in the bulwarks, spurting and pouring over everything, and finally overboard, until the action was repeated.
Two men in their yellow oilskins were upon the quarter-deck; one lying prone abaft the rise of the cabin, gazed sullenly at the menacing sky. The other sat and held on the wheel, which was fast in a becket, with relieving tackles on the gear heaving it hard down, and he tried to get puffs of smoke from a pipe. The wind was getting too strong for smoking, and he went into the companionway and called the mate to relieve him. Bahama Bill came up, and the Captain went below.
The big mate sat there watching the weather, and his face bore a good-humoured expression. The conditions suited his frame of mind. Away from the temptations of the beach, he was a different man from the fracas-loving ruffian when full of cheap grog. Captain Bull Sanders turned in for a short rest, knowing that the vessel was in good hands.