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I had a smart, light-draught vessel, capable of "going anywhere where a duck can swim," as we say at sea; we were well armed, had plenty of ammunition, mustered a crew of twenty-six prime seamen, the pick of the Barracouta's crew men who would go anywhere, and face anything we carried an ample supply of blankets, beads, brass wire, old muskets, and tawdry finery of various descriptions, priceless in the eyes of savages, for the purpose of peaceable ransom, if such could be accomplished; but we lacked an interpreter, a man acquainted with the barbaric language of the up-river natives, through whom we should be able to communicate with them and carry on the necessary negotiations.
But although we carried on day and night the Indiaman proving such a flyer that the Barracouta's people had their hands full to keep us in sight nothing more was seen of the Francesca, and we were at length driven to the conclusion that, failing to find us, Mendouca had resumed his voyage at a much earlier period than we had anticipated.
The two stiff fins betrayed him. "Swordfish all right!" muttered Jim. "Not quite so big as the other one, but too good to lose! Steady, Throppy!" Foot by foot the Barracouta's bowsprit forged up on their prospective prey. Nobody spoke. Jim's grip on the pine staff tightened; his eye measured the distance to the dull-blue shoulder.
For, as fate would have it, the Barracouta had fallen in with the Felicidad with the French schooner Mouette in company as a prize the latter vessel having pursued the Felicidad out of the creek, only to find that she had caught a Tartar, which captured her after a short but determined struggle and from her the Barracouta's people had learned all particulars of our somewhat disastrous enterprise, including the news that I was missing, and was believed to have been killed in the unsuccessful attack upon the schooner in the creek.
As the pallor of the sky extended itself insidiously north and south along the horizon, a low-lying bank of what at first presented the appearance of dense vapour became visible on the Barracouta's larboard bow; but presently, when the cold whiteness of the coming day became flushed with a delicate tint of purest, palest primrose, the supposed fog-bank assumed a depth of rich purple hue and a clear-cut sharpness of outline that proclaimed it what it was land, most unmistakably.
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