The lookouts clinging to the railing in the bow were peering anxiously ahead in the darkness, and the sailors in the pilot house were wrestling with the wheel; it was quite a task to keep that vessel headed straight, for she was going into the very teeth of the gale.
And as for Clif, he was watchfulness personified. When he was not eyeing the compass carefully he was hurrying about the vessel, now down in the fire-rooms, making sure that those Spaniards were doing as they were ordered, and again looking the prisoners over to make sure that the sly rascals had not wriggled themselves free.
"It would be a fine thing to do," he thought to himself, "if they managed to recapture the ship."
There was something quite prophetic in that thought.
It is hard to keep awake all night, but a man can do it if he has to even though he has been working like a Trojan all day.
Clif kept moving to work off the sleepiness whenever he felt it coming on.
"I'll have time enough to sleep by and by," he muttered.
He was thinking, grimly enough, of how he would be stalled in the town of Key West with his prize, waiting for a chance to get out to the fleet again.
The vessel did not attempt to make more than half speed during the trip, and that, against the storm, was very little.
But there was no need to hurry thought every one.