“All there, master,” said he, feeling his wrist.
“You’ve gone through your lessons o’er and o’er again?”
“O’er and o’er, master.”
“This job’ll make a fine man of you. You shall knock off the sea and choose a calling ashore. What would you be? Oh, but don’t think of that yet. Have nothing in your mind but this,” said I, holding up my hand and twisting it as though I screwed a man by the throat. “Afterward turn to and whistle and dance till you give in.”
His grin was deep and prolonged. The feeling that he was now being enormously trusted by me bred a sort of manliness in him. Methought he was a little less of a fool than he used to be; his gaze had gathered something of steadfastness, his grin something of intelligence.
When our stretch had brought the northern point of the island abeam, we put the brig about and headed for the island on the starboard tack; and now, after we had been sailing for some time, the telescope gave me a sight of what we were all on the lookout for. The northern point of the island sloped to the edge of the sea, in perhaps half a mile’s length of surf-washed margin. The surf was but a delicate tremble. The climb to the height was steep; but fair in the lenses lay the half-mile of landing-place, whether sand or beach or rock I knew not.
“Yonder’s where you’ll be able to get ashore,” I cried, thrusting the telescope into Yan Bol’s hands.
“What d’ye see?” bawled Teach, who overhung the bulwark rail.
“A landing-place, my ladts, und she vhas all right,” thundered Bol, with his eye at the telescope.
“Anything alive ashore?” cried Teach.