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"I'm supposed to be starting on a cruise," he told Mélanie, "but luck is with me. My cousin hasn't turned up or rather he turned up only to disappear instantly. Otherwise he would have dragged me off to catch the first ebb-tide, with me hanging back like an anchor-chain." "Is your cousin, then, such a tyrant?" "Oh, yes; he's a masterful man, is Jimmy."
Across the silent waste an engine bell jangles; the puff of steam ceases; the one plashing paddle-wheel at the stern is still; the lights glide more and more slowly; with a great crash and rumble, that is answered by the echoing woods, the anchor-chain runs out its short measure, and the steamer stops. Gently the pot-hunter's paddle dipped again, and the pirogue moved back towards the lugger.
To watch the beach and start the anchor when he saw them coming. And above all he was to keep quiet. The bow of the dory grated on the beach. The two men stepped out and without a backward glance slowly disappeared into the fog. Huddled in the bow, Mexican Joe waited by the anchor-chain, his eyes searching the little cove. For a long time he sat thus, not even daring to light a cigarette.
I shall slip on board, by boat or along hawser; and then one morning I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sailors, the clink of the capstan, and the rattle of the anchor-chain coming merrily in. We shall break out the jib and the foresail, the white houses on the harbour side will glide slowly past us as she gathers steering-way, and the voyage will have begun!
Six second mates on six American ships watched curiously, doubtingly, and at last anxiously, as sails were dropped and yards mastheaded on board the Almena, and as she paid off from the mooring-buoy before the land-breeze and showed them her stern, sent six dinghies, which gave up the pursuit in a few minutes and mustered around the buoy, where a wastefully slipped shot of anchor-chain gave additional evidence that all was not right.
The oyster pirates lay snugly together at short hawsers, the weather being fine, and they protested loudly at our ignorance in putting out such an unwarranted length of anchor-chain. And not only did they protest, for they made us heave it in again, all but thirty feet.
As the anchor-chain rattled through the hawser-hole, and the Brindisi felt the restraint of her land-tackle, we were surrounded by half a hundred native boats, most of which were Singhalese canoes, of such odd construction as to merit a special description.
He had seen himself again in his former haunts, in his club, and in the houses along Pacific avenue where he was received; but no sooner had the anchor-chain ceased rattling in the "Bertha's" hawse-pipe than a strange revulsion came upon him.
One morning the scream of our whistle and the bang of our little signal-gun, followed by the prolonged rattle of the anchor-chain running through the hawse-pipe, showed that we had reached some point of call. The ship lay about half a mile off shore, and one could see black figures running about the beach and pushing off a big black boat.
The oyster pirates lay snugly together at short hawsers, the weather being fine, and they protested loudly at our ignorance in putting out such an unwarranted length of anchor-chain. And not only did they protest, for they made us heave it in again, all but thirty feet.
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