United States or United States Minor Outlying Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
My first act was to drag the tiller over to windward and pass a turn of the tiller rope round the head of it, to help the felucca to pay off; for she was now gathering headway. Then I sprang to the taffrail and looked over it.
As soon as he had learned the whereabout of the rest of the fleet, and given instructions to Captain Price, he again embarked in the felucca, and sailed for Sitjes.
The port is without a sail, excepting that once in a while a solitary felucca may be seen, disgorging its holy cargo of baccala, the meagre provision for the Quaresima or Lent.
So Ottoviani and his guide went ashore, whilst Cicconi and his felucca put out to sea in search of the rest of the fleet. Towards eleven o'clock at night the lieutenant of the watch descried a man in the waves swimming to the vessel. As soon as he was within hearing the lieutenant hailed him. The swimmer immediately made himself known: it was Luidgi. They put out the boat, and he came on board.
"That felucca is the craft which lay near the landing," quietly observed Raoul, who had now come on the forecastle with a view to converse with Ithuel; "her name is la Divina Providenza; she is given to smuggling between Leghorn and Corsica, and is probably bound to the latter at this moment. It is a bold step, too, to stand directly for her port under such circumstances!"
"I am gratified to learn from Francisco that you rested soundly during the night I was afraid the motion of the felucca would prove disagreeable to you. We have had a fine breeze from the eastward all night, and La Guayra is now nearly a hundred miles astern of us." "That is good news," I remarked. "But why should you have anticipated any evil results to us from the motion of the craft?
"These faculties are great gifts in one who liveth by the sea and a critical trade." "Here came one Gino, a gondolier of Don Camillo Monforte, and an ancient fellow of mine, aboard the felucca, attended by a woman in mask.
The gondolier scarce raised his eyes to the balcony, but commencing an air much used on the canals, he swept onward, like one whose duty called for no haste. "That has succeeded!" said Don Camillo, when he heard the song of Gino. "In an hour my agent will have secured the felucca, and all now depends on our own means of quitting the palace unobserved.
"Shall I prepare your bath?" The sleeper showed no signs of awakening. Soames forced himself to touch one of the thrown-back shoulders. He shook it gently. The man on the bed raised his arms and dropped them back again into their original position, without opening his eyes. "They... are hiding," he murmured thickly... "in the... orange grove.... If the felucca sails... closer... they will"...
This, however, I was not surprised at, for as nearly as I could judge the felucca showed barely nine inches of freeboard! Still the little hooker seemed surprisingly buoyant, considering her water-logged condition, and now that the seas no longer broke over her, there seemed to be no reason why, given enough time, I should not be able to pump her dry, and resume my voyage to Barbadoes.
Word Of The Day