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The fleet was not extended with that of the enemy, by which is meant that the respective vans, centres, and rears were not opposed; the British van being only abreast of the allied centre, their centre of the allied rear, Lestock tailing away astern and to windward, while the dozen leading French were some distance ahead of both bodies.
In the wind and rain the fire could not burn at all had they not by means of a stick propped up a hurdle to windward, and thus sheltered it. As it is there seems no flame, only white embers and a flow of smoke, into which the men from time to time cast the dead wood they have gathered. Here the pot is boiled and the cooking accomplished at a safe distance from the litter and straw of the rickyard.
Heidrek altered his course at once, sailing a point or two more free than we, either, as Bertric thought, because he could lie no closer to the wind, or else meaning to edge down on us. And, he being so far to windward, for a time it seemed as if he neared us fast. In two hours we knew that we outsailed him, close hauled.
'By the way, that reminds me, he added; 'we must stop at Kiel for the inside of a day and lay in a lot of stores. We want to be independent of the shore. I said nothing. Independence of the shore in a seven-tonner in October! What an end to aim at! About nine o'clock we weathered the point, entered Kiel Fiord, and began a dead beat to windward of seven miles to the head of it where Kiel lies.
We continued from all parts of the ship peering into the darkness some to windward, others to leeward, and others a stern. Now I thought I saw something, but it was the dark top of a wave under the glistening foam. Five minutes had elapsed since the accident. Long before this the ship must have left him far astern, and he must have sunk beneath those heavy waves.
"All depends on our gears holding on, sir," was the answer, "with a little on Providence. Just watch the point ahead, Captain Gar'ner; though we are not actually to leeward of it, see with what a drift we have drawn upon it! The manner in which these seas roll in from the sow-west is terrific! No craft can go to windward against them." This remark of Hazard's was very just.
Instead, therefore, of working my way out into the Atlantic, through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Saint Domingo, I stretched across the Caribbean Sea on a taut larboard bowline, and noon on the fourth day after sailing from Port Royal found us some ninety miles west-north-west of the French island of Martinique, and while I was at dinner the mate stuck his head through the skylight to report land right ahead.
He is to windward of him that is to say, the dishes reach him before they get to the baron, which, however, does not prevent his clearing them without shame. The observation, in sea language, made me smile, and Caterna, noticing it, gave me a wink with a slight movement of the shoulder toward the baron.
Self-confident as he was, glutted with success as he was, he had in his heart a premonition that some time he might want that money just where it was placed. So there it lay, accumulating interest. It was an anchor to windward, that would hold him if ever his bark should drift into shallow or dangerous waters.
I must see it out I must see it out," but he consented to sit down for a moment on the skylight, with his hard face turned unflinchingly to windward. The sea spat at it and stoical, it streamed with water as though he had been weeping. On the weather side of the poop the watch, hanging on to the mizen rigging and to one another, tried to exchange encouraging words.
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