'All right, old girl,' Perkins sang out, waving his stick cheerily at her, 'I sabby you, you come aboard, by an' by, when we come back—give you some ship's baccy—come aboard the Hector.'
'Shove off,' he told Bob, and off we pulled, the crew grinning from ear to ear, and the niggers all cackling with laughter, dancing about and singing out, 'Three cheers for the red, white, and blue,' 'Old England for ebber,' and Mrs. Arabella's voice following us, 'I mak' de prayer to de good Lo'd for Massa Perkins—Him keepa Massa Perkins from harm—Arabella want de three shillin' and tuppence.'
'You've got some nice friends, Bill,' the ward-room officers chaffed him.
The cable was already clanking in through the hawse-pipe as we got aboard, and in half an hour the Hercules was following us out through the eastern passage, and we headed across for the mainland and Santa Cruz.
It was my morning watch next morning (from four to eight), and it was a grand sight to see the sun rise behind us, flooding the calm sea with red and orange colours, whilst the little wisps of clouds which hung about the sides of the fierce-looking mountains of Santa Cruz, in front of us, kept on changing from gold to pink and from pink to orange.
O'Leary was the quarter-master of the watch, and I saw the old chap looking at them. He shook his head at me, 'Better than an "oleo"—that—sir. That's God's own picture.'
Even the stokers who'd just come off watch and were cooling themselves, down on the fo'c'stle below us, stood watching the grand sight, and then, down at the foot of the mountains, a long white line showed up.
'That's the breakwater at Los Angelos,' fat little Carlton, our navigator, told me.
As we forged along through the oily, glistening sea, and got closer, we could see the masts and funnels and fighting-tops of the little Navy of Santa Cruz sheltering behind it, all tinged with the sunrise; and the hundreds of windows in the lighthouse and the houses clustered at the foot of the mountains were all glowing as if they were on fire. If old Gerald had heard we were coming, it was quite likely that he'd come down from the estate and might be snoring on his back behind one of them, snoring like a good 'un and dreaming about the last football match he'd played in.
Then high up the side of the dark mountains a ball of white smoke shot out, hung there in the still air for a second or two, and melted away, changing colour as it disappeared.