The inlet was never more than a mile wide; in places the rocks crowded in toward the channel until a strong man could have flung a stone from shore to shore. The waterway was really a series of quiet salt pools.
The shores were wild and rugged. I had never seen a more forbidding coast. When the night dropped down upon us—as it did suddenly, and a starless sky o’er-head—I wondered how Pedro could smell his way through. I heard Tugg roaring something in Spanish about “the beacon” and then a spark of fire flared out in the darkness far ahead. It looked like a stationary lamp and burned brightly. The captain came over to me, chuckling.
“That’s my partner’s light,” he said, with satisfaction. “He rigged that beacon, and it’s lit every night that the Sea Spell is on a cruise. Pedro can work the schooner up the inlet by that light without rubbing a hair.”
And so we sailed on, and on, without a thought of danger until, of a sudden, I felt the schooner jar throughout her whole length. Captain Tugg jumped and yelled to Pedro:
“What in tarnation you doin’, numbskull? Hi, one o’ you boys! git into the chains with the lead.”
But before the man could sound the Sea Spell grounded again, and this time she ran her keel upon a sand bank so solidly that she stopped dead, with the sails above cracking! There was a hullabaloo for a few minutes, now I tell you. Shouts, commands, the grinding of the schooner’s keel, the slatting of sails. The Sea Spell had driven so hard and fast upon the shoal that she canted neither to port, or starboard. And although the sea was still so that she would not be beaten by the waves, it looked much to me as though she were piled up on this unfriendly coast for good and all!
Chapter XXVII
In Which We Find the Natives More Unfriendly Than the Coast