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The schooner's masts, of course, pointed to leeward, and when she drifted in here, they have first touched on a shelving rock, and as they have been shoved up, little by little, they have acted as levers to right the hull, until the cargo has shifted back into its proper berth, which has suddenly set the vessel up again."
Inside the cove the schooner's canvas was reduced smartly to merely a topsail and jib, the wind in which carried her close enough to Luiz Wharf for a line to be cast ashore. Tier upon tier of barrels of clams were stored under the open sheds, ready to be packed away in the Seamew's hold. Orion loudly acclaimed against a malign fate. "Hi golly! Ain't we goin' to have no spare time at all?
"I ree-marked," he observed, "as how you had brains, my son." A few minutes later the Captain, who was standing in the dory's bow and alternately conning the ocean's surface and looking back to the Chinaman standing on the schooner's masthead, uttered an exclamation: "Steady, ship your oars, quiet now, quiet, you damn fools! We're right on 'em four, by Gawd, an' big as dinin' tables!"
Most unwillingly the fellow tucked up his trousers grinning horribly at Orlo all the time when he was found to have on a pair of garters, out of each of which rolled thirty doubloons. The schooner's head being put off-shore, the boats took her in tow, till, a breeze springing up, sail was made on her for Sierra Leone. The next morning commenced with a thick mist and rain.
'I don't like the way this schooner's painted, said he, 'and I've taken a down upon her name. But he tired of it in half an hour, and the schooner went on her way with an incongruous patch of colour on the stern, and the word Farallone part obliterated and part looking through. He refused to stand either the middle or the morning watch.
It is garrisoned by black soldiers, chiefly from the West Indies, but their officers are all Englishmen. As soon as the schooner's anchor was let go, Murray and Adair hurried on shore to report themselves to the Governor, and to obtain his assistance.
Tell 'em to pick out half-a-dozen of the strongest young blacks, and we'll give 'em a cutlash and a belt apiece, and set 'em to keep guard by the schooner's side." "But would it be safe, Tom?" cried Mark eagerly. "Not very, sir, for the skipper and his men. Soup'll explain it to 'em, and once they know, you see if they don't do all that dooty splendid, and leave us free to navigate the schooner."
The tall mast, the tapering tracery of spars, the snowy canvas and the general trim and orderly air maintained, were all attractive to the eye. In a brief time, the tug was lying alongside and the stores transferred to the schooner's hold in short order. A dozen or more catlike sailors assisted the crew of the tug, and Ralph made himself useful.
Then bang it goes; smash tumbles the door and hatch and all the rest of it, and then out we rushes, knocks 'em over one at a time, and the schooner's ours." "Man, man, can't you see that if we did that we should blow ourselves up as well?" "No, we wouldn't sir, because we'd lie down." "Well, what difference would that make?" "All on it, sir. Powder flies up, and it wouldn't hurt us." "Think not?"
Early in the morning, with the light itself, he did intend to have Bigelow under the schooner's bottom; but he saw no occasion for his working in the dark. Launching was a delicate business, and some accident might happen in the obscurity.
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