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"My way to heaven lies in this direction," I soliloquized, and the quivering yacht went bounding on as I allowed wild dreams to race unchecked through my brain. A sleepy Samoan in the main cross-trees screamed a message to the deck while the pink flush of the tropical dawn was still in the sky, and The Waif plunged through the water toward the island.
She is a good-sized, decked vessel, generally between five-and-twenty and a hundred tons, with good beam and full bows, narrow at the stern and rather high out of water unless very heavily laden. She has one stout mast, cross-trees, and a light topmast. She has an enormous yard, much longer than herself, on which is bent the high peaked mainsail.
"If they do," observed Talcott, laughing, "we can retreat to the cross-trees, and thence to the royal-yard." Marble looked inquisitive, but, at the same time, he looked knowing. "I understand," he said, with a nod; "three people with six sets of ears is it not so, Miles?" "Precisely; though you only do them credit by halves, for you should have added to this inventory forty tongues."
On board the ship the sight of some quarters of beef secured to the mizen cross-trees had attracted numbers of these hawks, and upwards of a dozen might have been seen at one time perched upon the rigging, including one on each truck; on shore they made several attacks upon a pile of geese lying near the boat, and although repeatedly driven off with stones, they returned as often to make a fresh attempt.
"What, sir!" roared the captain. "If you please, sir, I was chopping a piece of beef, and the dog, who was standing by, turned short round, and put his tail under the chopper." "Put his tail under the chopper, you little scamp!" replied Captain L , in a fury. "Now just put your head above the maintop-gallant cross-trees, and stay there until you are called down.
Beyond lay the harbor, prickly with masts from the shipping, and flags everywhere, a maze of cross-trees and yards, red and black smokestacks and cranes that looked like gibbets. Seaward stretched the Breakwater, a cyclopean wall of red bowlders heaped up in confusion to make a lee on that storm-swept shore.
But no, we could hear the stentorian tones of the skipper on the cross-trees shouting that which to any but an experienced sailor must have seemed certain suicide. "Keep her away! Keep her full! Don't starve her! Give her way! Up topsail!" the latter having been let down to allow the vessel to lie closer hauled to the wind. "Stand by to douse the head sails!
"Well, now, I'll tell you what I would do," said the captain: "I would have none of your fancy rigs with the man driving from the mizzen cross-trees, but a plain fore-and-aft hack cab of the highest registered tonnage. First of all, I would bring up at the market and get a turkey and a sucking-pig.
It was very cold, blowing hard from the S.E., with heavy squalls; I was so wet that the wind appeared to blow through me, and it was now nearly dark. I reached the cross-trees, and when I was seated there, I felt that I had done my duty, and had not been fairly treated. During this time, the boat had been hauled up alongside to clear, and a pretty clearance there was.
It was a day of fierce equatorial sunshine; but the breeze was strong and chill; and the mate, who conned the schooner from the cross-trees, returned shivering to the deck. The lagoon was thick with many-tinted wavelets; a continuous roaring of the outer sea overhung the anchorage; and the long, hollow crescent of palm ruffled and sparkled in the wind.
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