It fell a stark calm at ten o'clock, and then I believed that there could be nothing for it but to bring up—that is, to let go the anchor; but half an hour later the moonlight upon the water—for by this time the moon had floated southward—was tarnished by a little air of wind from the south and west; it breathed, wet with dew, like a sigh into the schooner's canvas, then softly freshened into a small summer night-wind. The mass of clouds in the west had vanished; all was clear heaven from the sea line there to the looming shadow of the land over our bow; the moon rode high, small and piercingly clear; the canvas shone like ice in the light; stars of diamond-like brilliance sparkled in the moisture along the rail; and every man's shadow lay at his feet upon the pearl-colored planks, as though drawn in Indian ink there. The hush of expectation lay upon the little vessel as she crept along with a noise of rippling water refreshingly rising from alongside. Captain Dopping held his watch to the moon.
"Wants but twenty minutes to midnight," said he; "we're close enough in. Down helm," and he began to sing out orders in a voice whose harshness sounded startlingly upon the ear amid the exquisite serenity of that moonlit night.
The men ran about, still further reducing sail. So clear was the night, it was possible even at a distance to read the expressions upon their faces. There was no Preventive Force or Coastguard Service then as now. The English coast was indeed watched at certain parts of it where smuggling was notoriously carried on, and the people who kept a look-out were styled blockaders; but the northern reaches, more particularly where the coast was rugged and high, and where the facility for "running" goods, as it was called, was small, were unsentineled. The smuggler needed the accommodating creek, the comfortably shoaling foreshore, secret hiding places, and, above all, a handy local machinery for the prompt distribution of his commodities. All this was to be found in the English Channel, more particularly in that stretch of it which lies between the North and South Forelands; but it was not to be met with up here, on this lonely iron-bound Cumberland coast. In our time, even in these times, when smuggling is a decaying, an almost extinct business, the pallid apparition of such a schooner as La Casandra hovering doubtfully at midnight off any point of the English shore would infallibly in a very short time win the regard and invite the visit of a boat full of brawny coastguards, armed, as our men were about to arm themselves, with pistols and with cutlasses.
"Get the boat launched, my lads," called out Captain Dopping.
The gangway was unshipped, the muscular fists of the seamen gripped her gunwales, and she was run with a note of thunder overboard, stern foremost, smiting the water a blow that lashed it white, then lying quietly in the shadow of the schooner. The two Spaniards descended into the cabin, Don Lazarillo talking noisily as he trod upon his companion's heels. I stood looking on while Captain Dopping and the seamen girded the cutlasses to their hips and thrust pistols into their pockets or breasts.
"You will keep a bright look-out for us, Mr. Portlack," said the captain. "Hold the schooner as stationary as possible. There's nothing going to hurt her to-night," said he, with a look round, "and there'll be no tide to speak of for another two hours. You will then wear and keep her with her head to the nor'ard."
"Ay, ay, sir. But suppose, while you're ashore, a boat should come off and speak us?"
"Not likely, not likely," he rasped out.
"But suppose it, Captain Dopping. I accept no responsibility. What am I to say, and what am I to do?"
"Don't Don Christoval and his friend mean to come?" he answered, walking to the skylight and looking down.