“There’s no one on the island, I’m certain of that,” said Montes, whose squat, ugly form was so near the loop-hole that it actually darkened Frank’s range of vision. “I can’t just make it out, but I know this much—that’s the Sea Eagle, and she’s ours dead sure! We’ll get her off to-morrow at flood-tide. There’s a bit of a blow in that cloud a-comin’ up in the east, but it won’t amount to much, so we’ll light a fire, get something to eat, and take it easy.”
“It’s pretty nigh a month since she stranded, by the depth of the sand around her,” remarked Turpie, looking first at the schooner and then at the fire he was kindling a little way from the others. “I’d like to know what’s become of the captain and the mate and Jack?”
“I reckon Dunham’s in Davy Jones’ locker, for that air slash Dardano gave him wasn’t no scratch, I can tell you. They was short of hands, and didn’t have no time to attend to him; but that don’t satisfactorily account for the schooner bein’ here, and dismantled as she is,” rejoined Montes, with a puzzled air. “Captain Thorne wasn’t the man to abandon his ship while a plank held together, and there’s the Sea Eagle with as sound a hull as ever floated, and a—”
“And the better luck for us,” roughly interrupted Sagasta. “I’d like to have got a whack at the boy; but, since he’s food for sharks, I’ll call it square. Wreckers have been here before us—there’s no doubt of that—and they’ve cleaned her out pretty thoroughly, too; but we’ll take the schooner, and she’s a good enough prize to suit me,” he laughed, with a cunning glance at Montes. “Yes, good enough, and as lawful a one as was ever picked up on the high seas,” he continued, in a rather more positive tone of voice. “All we have to do is to get her off, bend on a sail or two, and head her for Bonacca or Barbette. Once there, we’ll just paint out her old name and paint in a new one, and then, with that dark water-line transformed into a light blue, and I am Captain Sagasta, if you please, with fair pay for your services, of course, mates.”
This last remark of Sagasta’s did not seem to meet with much favor from Chris and the mulatto, but they were prudently silent, for the Spaniard was obviously the master-spirit of the unprepossessing gang. Even Montes, cruel and greedy as he was,
yielded him the palm of superiority in matters of this sort.
Having finished their hastily-prepared meal, Turpie acting both as cook and steward, they cut down several of the largest of the palm trees that grew in the vicinity, and began shaping them into rollers ready for getting the schooner afloat.
Frank was a frightened but very attentive watcher of all they did. Not till he saw them repair to their boat for the night did he venture to snatch a mouthful to eat.
Every word of their conversation, while seated under the plantain tree, he had heard, and the recollection of it, and the near proximity of such dangerous neighbors, prevented him from closing his eyes the live-long night.
By the first peep of day the wreckers were astir, and so was Frank—that is, he had taken up his station at the loophole, determined to let nothing escape him in relation to their plans and purposes.