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Updated: May 28, 2025
At length came the rattle of loose stones mingled with the sound of low-pitched voices. Gracious a Dios. It was Señor Lang and Señor Gregory. Joe's hand leaped to the anchor-chain. There would be need to hurry. He tugged hard at the heavy cable, then he stopped, straightened and screamed a warning. Gregory and Lang whirled about only a few feet from the dory.
This, with much unseamanlike performance, we succeeded in doing, and likewise in clearing the anchor-chain, of which we let out about three hundred feet. With only ten feet of water under us, this would permit the Coal Tar Maggie to swing in a circle six hundred feet in diameter, in which circle she would be able to foul at least half the fleet.
Should he have waited until his return? He wondered. It was a young man's work, such a job as this, and yet, no, it was better to get to the bottom of the thing to-night. His head sank lower on his breast. Perhaps he could snatch a few winks of sleep. He might need it. The muffled rattle of the anchor-chain caused him to waken sharply, stiff with cold. The motor was silent.
When we came alongside I climbed to the deck by the anchor-chain, when I found the ship to be deserted, with hatches on, and the doors to the cabins securely locked. So, judging we had nothing to fear from the Spaniards, we returned to the "Speedwell" as silently as we had come.
Heaving in on the anchor-chain till it was up and down, 'Frisco Kid and Joe ceased from their exertions. Everything was in readiness to give the Dazzler the jib, and go. They strained their eyes in the direction of the shore. The clamor had died away, but here and there lights were beginning to flash.
It was not possible that the crime and the escape could go long undetected; the watch might at any moment come the full length of the ship. Gering flashed a glance at him again, his back was to him still, suddenly doffed the hat and cloak, vaulted lightly upon the bulwarks, caught the anchor-chain, slid down it into the water, and struck out softly along the side.
At first wine was served by the black servants to those that drank it, though all quickly shifted back to Scotch and soda, pickling their food as they ate it, ere it went into their calcined, pickled stomachs. Over their coffee, they heard the rumble of an anchor-chain through a hawse-pipe, tokening the arrival of a vessel. "It's David Grief," Peter Gee remarked. "How do you know?"
The squall was now a fast-disappearing pillar in the west. The anchor-chain ran merrily out, and we rounded to in the narrow harbor of Garden Key. The boys manned the pump, while Sandy and the writer pulled for the shore, and the dingy soon crunched into the white, sandy beach of the coral island which during the war was the Botany Bay of America.
Wilbur and the crew jumped once more to the brakes. "Brake down, heave y'r anchor to the cathead." The anchor-chain, already taut, vibrated and then cranked through the hawse-holes as the hands rose and fell at the brakes. The anchor came home, dripping gray slime. A nor'west wind filled the schooner's sails, a strong ebb tide caught her underfoot.
"What are you looking at, Siegbert?" Edmund asked, seeing the jarl looking thoughtfully at the anchor-chain as the ship swung round. "I am thinking," the jarl said, "that we must have made some error. Do you not see that she rides, just as we were sailing, with her head to the north-east? That shows that the current is against us."
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