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Updated: June 3, 2025
From the moment that the Arato had left the Straits of Magellan, and Captain Horn had had reason to believe that he had left his dangers behind him, the prow of his vessel had been set toward the Strait of Gibraltar, and every thought of his heart toward Edna. Burke and Shirley both noticed a change in him.
One night, before the Arato reached the Falkland Islands, Maka, who was on watch, heard a queer sound in the forecastle, and looking down the companionway, he saw, by the dim light of the swinging lantern, a man with a hatchet, endeavoring to force the blade of it into the side of the vessel.
The only really cheerful thing upon the beach was the fire, which leaped high and blazed merrily as the dried wood was heaped upon it. When the Arato changed her mind about going to Callao, and sailed southward some five days after the Miranda had started on the same course, she had very good weather for the greater part of a week, and sailed finely.
There were men among them who could navigate. But when they got near enough to shore to see that the stranded vessel was the Miranda, there was no more insubordination. As for himself, Garta said he was a plain, common sailor, who went on board the Arato because he wanted a job. If he had known the errand on which she was bound, he would never have approached within a league of her.
This little locker, just large enough to hold one bottle, had been made by one of the former crew of the Arato solely for the purpose of concealing spirits, and was very ingeniously contrived. Its door was a portion of the side of the forecastle, and a keyhole was concealed behind a removable knot. Garta had not opened the locker before, for the reason that he had been unable to find the key.
Burke now became tired of waiting to see what would happen next, and putting his hat on a little stick, he raised it a short distance above the breastwork. Instantly one of the more excitable men from the Arato fired at it. "Very good," said Burke. "They want to keep it up, do they? Now, captain," he continued, "we can see the backs and legs of most of them. Shall we fire at them?
"Perhaps he is," thought the captain, but he did not speak this thought aloud. The next day the work of loading the Arato with the bags of gold was begun, and it was a much slower and more difficult business than the unloading of the Miranda, for the schooner lay much farther out from the beach. But there were two men more than on the former occasion, and the captain did not push the work.
Having never had, until now, the responsibility of a vessel upon him, Cardatas was a good deal more cautious and prudent, perhaps, than Captain Horn would have been had he been in command of the Arato.
It was not an air of pride or assumed superiority that he wore, it was nothing assumed, it was nothing of which he was not entirely aware. It was the gradual growth within him, as health grows into a man recovering from a sickness, of the consciousness of power. The source of that consciousness lay beneath him, as he trod the deck of the Arato.
He told of his adventures on shore, and how kind the men had been to him until they went on board the Arato, and how then they treated him as if he had been a dog how he had been made to do double duty in all sorts of disagreeable work, and how, after they had seen the light on the beach, he had been put into the hold and tied hand and foot.
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