“Pull, you toyfils! Shoomp und run!” bawled Bol, in his hurricane note, to the two Spaniards, who were loafing near the galley, lazily looking on at the work that was going forward. “Dis vhas not der islandt—dis vhas no shipwreck. Shoomp, or I make you fly mit a sharge of goonpowder in der slack of yer breeks.”
The royals were sheeted home; trysail, flying jib, staysails set; for it was a quartering wind, and there was scarce a cloth that we could throw abroad but could do serviceable work. They called this sort of sailing in our time going along all fluking, the weather-clew of the mainsail up and the lee-clew dully lifting its weight of blocks and hawser-like sheets and thick frame of foot and bolt-rope.
“Set all stu’n’-sails,” cried Greaves; and soon out to windward soared to their several yardarms and to their boom-ends those wide, overhanging spaces of sail, clothing the brig in surf-white cloths from the royal mast heads to the very heave of the brine, when she rolled her swinging-boom to windward.
“Pipe to dinner!” called Greaves.
The sweet, clear strains of Yan Bol’s whistle found a hundred echoes in the hollows on high. Aurora gazed upward, as though looking for the birds. The men had worked hard, and were pale with heat and sweat. They had worked with a will in making sail. Even the Dutchmen had sprang along and aloft with a bluejacket’s activity; for we were homeward bound! a cry in every marine heart magical in its inspiration of swift and eager labor. With dripping brows the men stood looking at the receding island, while Yan Bol whistled them to dinner; and when the burly Dutch boatswain let fall the pipe upon his breast to the length of its laniard, all hands, moved by feelings which made every throat one for the moment, roared out a long, wild cheer of farewell to the island, flourishing caps and arms to it, as though its heights were crowded with friends who could see and hear them.
“Look at Galloon!” cried Greaves.
The dog was on the taffrail, and every bark he sent at the island was like a loud hurrah, with the significance the noise took from the wagging of the creature’s tail and the set of the whole figure of him.
“He knows we are homeward bound,” said Greaves.
“And that the dollars are aboard,” said I.
Miss Aurora went to the dog, caressed, and talked to him. The lad Jimmy’s head showed at the galley door. Greaves hailed him to know when dinner would be ready.