Captain Westfield quickly grasped the strange situation. "She's gone as far as she can," he declared. "She is resting on a shoal. Steer down on the leeward side of her, Charley, and we will take off the crew."
The other launch captains had been on the watch and had cut loose at the same time as Charley. Following the "Dixie's" example, they flocked around to the lee side of the wreck and assisted to take off the crew. The rescued negroes came aboard, wet to the skin, and fright had given their ebony faces a peculiar, ashen hue.
The solemn lanky captain was the last to leave the schooner. Before getting aboard the "Dixie," he made his way up to the vessel's bow and knocking out the shackle pin let the anchor drop to the bottom; a move which Captain Westfield watched with a twinkle in his eyes.
"That darkey sure knows his business," he remarked in an undertone to Charley.
The other launches crowded around the "Dixie," their captains wanting a consultation.
"The schooner's not in bad shape here," Bill Roberts observed. "There isn't sea enough to break her up. The owners can get a sea tug and a steam pump from Tampa, and get her up and keep her afloat long enough to tow her into the dry dock."
"We might as well all run on into Tarpon now and draw on Curry Bros. for that thousand dollars," one of the other captains proposed.
"You-alls can't collect dat money now," observed the darkey skipper, calmly. "You-alls wasn't to get it 'less you got de schooner into de dry dock."
"Didn't we do our best?" demanded Bill Roberts. "Haven't we got you nearly there? Haven't we got your vessel into a place where she will not be lost? Where would your old ship be outside in the gulf in this gale? She wouldn't have lasted out there as long as a snowball in the warm place."