Macreary said nothing. He was like a man who had suddenly awakened from a horrible nightmare.
"Well, you won't lose nothin' by this trip," went on the captain; "them fellows will be blown off fifty miles before morning—and there ain't a soul aboard the bark—she's ourn, and that's a fact."
At the End of the Reef
The light-keeper at Fowey Rocks had been given a new assistant, and the new man was Bahama Bill, the giant wrecker and mate of a sponging sloop. He was a negro Conch, so-called on account of the diet upon which many of the native Bankers were supposed to live, the Conch proving an easy and nourishing meal for the lazy and incompetent reefer. But the name soon applied to all alike, and the Conch, instead of becoming a word of opprobrium, stood for all men who made the Reef or Great Bahama Bank their home.
William Haskins, otherwise known as Bahama Bill, was a Fortune Islander, and his acceptance of the keeper's position was but temporary, taking the place of the assistant who was absent on his quarterly leave. The head keeper, an old man, seldom left the light.
It was summer-time and the air was warm with the tropical heat of the coast. The distance from the land kept the lighthouse cooler than ordinary, but the hot Stream flowing past at a temperature of eighty-three degrees gave no cooling effect. The days of the assistant's absence dragged slowly along, the old keeper tending the light with his usual care. Then came a season of frightful humidity and glaring sunshine, lasting many days, the mercury standing always at ninety-five or more.
Bahama Bill spent the warm weather loafing about the town of Miami, and as he was in no hurry to go back to the light, he took pains to spend what money he possessed in whatever finery he thought befitted his magnificent personal appearance best. Standing several inches over six feet and being enormously solid and broad in proportion, he was an object of admiration to the many black men who loafed along the Florida shore. With the Seminoles he had nothing whatever to do, for these Indians showed their distaste for negroes so plainly that it was with difficulty trouble was avoided whenever the men of the Glades came to town to trade their deerskins for ammunition. Bahama Bill stuck to his class until it was past the time for him to return to the light, and then started off, rigged out clean and shipshape in a small boat.