Peter was bending over his work, and he gave a queer chuckle.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You never can tell what you may see until you look. You might see an old friend, Timmie. A real sailor always knows what shows above the horizon, and sometimes what ’s beyond, if it ain’t too far.”
This speech of Peter’s nettled me a little, for I thought I was a real sailor by this time. I looked around carefully. It was pretty clear, with occasional heavy clouds, and deep shadows under them. There was one such cloud away down to the northward, and I thought that I saw a vessel in its shadow. The clouds were moving briskly, and as I watched, the sun suddenly shone there, and illumined the topsail yards of a schooner and the upper half of her lower sails. It was like a spotlight in a theatre, suddenly shoving the vessel into plain view against the shadows which surrounded her. There was but one such rig in all the seven seas. It was the Annie Battles. She had left Papeete within an hour, probably, and was standing to the northward.
I sighed. “Just our luck,” I said. “If she had only been a few hours later!”
“Would you call it good luck, or bad, Timmie?”
“I should call it hard luck, Peter. Would n’t you?”
“Well,” he answered slowly, “she ain’t mine, and I don’t believe in looking for trouble. I suppose Cap’n Coffin calls it hard luck. You can see for yourself.” And he jerked his head in the direction of the after house.
There stood Captain Coffin, a glass glued to his eye. He said nothing, but he had no need to. Anybody could tell from his face what his thoughts were.
At Papeete we got our water, and our extra casks, although some of them had to be lashed on deck, as the hold was full. It took several days to get this done, for extra casks were not plentiful, and the men could not be denied some liberty ashore. The pleasures that Papeete offered to our shore-famished men were alluring, and it was hard to get them back. I could understand this, for I went ashore too. I managed to resist the allurements of the place, thanks more to Peter than to any tendency on my own part to asceticism, and I had a thoroughly good time. When I got back to the ship I found that Captain Coffin had been making inquiries, and had found that the Annie Battles, under the name of the Seafoam, had sailed on a trading trip among the islands to the eastward, the Paumotus and the Marquesas. He was as excited as a boy, and full of eagerness and glee.
We got our men back at last, and sailed to the northward. I was surprised at this, for we were bound home, and for the most rapid passage around the Horn we should have started out to the southward; but I thought it likely that Captain Coffin had persuaded Captain Nelson to have a last try at the Battles. If she stopped at the islands, as she would, making frequent stops, we should be close on her heels, and might reasonably hope to catch her. At one of the Marquesas Islands, too, there was a well-known spring of very good water, emptying on the beach. Whalers often touched there for water, and it might have been in Captain Nelson’s mind to fill up his casks there for the long run around the Horn.