It was a black sailor who had discovered the fact of the leak in the Pearl. He had heard an unusual sound. It was the trickling water more or less confused with the rippling of the waves against the hull. He had gone to Norris with the news. And Norris had given his ear to the thing only for a moment, before sounding the alarm.
At last we came to the piece of beach aimed for. We took the anchor in a small boat well in to shore, so that as the tide rose the bow of the schooner was pulled more and more on the sand. It would be well toward noon of the new day, before the tide will have reached its height, and so begin to recede, and leave the Pearl showing gradually more and more of her hull above water.
We found time to discuss the situation and the probable means employed for our undoing; for no one of us was in any doubt that it was Duran who had done this thing.
"He send one black weeth the augur, or brace and bit, an' drill holes in thee hull," said Captain Marat. And he pointed to a loop of rope still hanging on a starboard bowsprit stay. It was by that rope that the worker had swung himself, while he bored holes into the hull below water-line.
"And to think he sneaked up on me in broad moonlight and did that thing!" said Grant Norris.
"Well, you see," I offered, "the swimmer approached on the opposite side from the Orion; and the waves helped hide his head. We none of us dreamed of his trying anything like that."
"We should have done even more than ever dream it," wailed Norris. "And now he'll have at least twenty-four hours the start of us, the best we can do."