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We slipped past the point of the pier. Peter crept forward and crouched on the deck in front of the mast I peered into the gloom to catch sight of our mooring-buoy. "Let her away a bit yet," said Peter. "Now luff her, luff her all you can." The boat edged up into the wind. Peter, flat on his stomach, grasped the buoy and hauled it on board. The fore-sheets beat their tattoo on the deck.
It was eight o'clock, and the evening was deliciously warm. Major Kent and Meldon sat in hammock chairs on the gravel outside Portsmouth Lodge. They had dined comfortably, and their pipes were lit. For a time neither of them spoke. Below them, beyond the wall which bounded the lawn, lay the waters of the bay, where the Spindrift, Major Kent's yacht, hung motionless over her mooring-buoy.
Such cases and packages as it was thought the doctor would have a difficulty in breaking open unaided were attacked by the three men, and their contents laid bare; and then Gaunt and Nicholls got on board the raft which was berthed at a short distance from the beach and made thoroughly secure by being moored with the ship's smallest kedge and, hoisting her huge lateen sail, cast off from the mooring-buoy, and proceeded to execute a few trial evolutions preparatory to the exploration of the reef.
And so, with a crippled crew of schooner sailors, the square-rigger Almena was towed to sea, smoldering rebellion in one end of her, the power of the law in the other murder in the heart of every man on board. Five months later the Almena lay at an outer mooring-buoy in Callao Roads, again ready for sea, but waiting. With her at the anchorage were representatives of most of the maritime nations.
Six second mates on six American ships watched curiously, doubtingly, and at last anxiously, as sails were dropped and yards mastheaded on board the Almena, and as she paid off from the mooring-buoy before the land-breeze and showed them her stern, sent six dinghies, which gave up the pursuit in a few minutes and mustered around the buoy, where a wastefully slipped shot of anchor-chain gave additional evidence that all was not right.
Two young men in what they conceived to be sea costumes were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily. "Shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. No beam," said Harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her mooring-buoy. "They're having what stands them for a good time.
There's a good stove, and always plenty of driftwood on the beach. It's a mighty snug place on a stormy day." Percy turned up his nose at this list of good points. "What's that pile of chicken-coops near it?" "Lobster-traps." "And that big box with its top just above water?" "A lobster-car. All that we catch in the traps we put in there until the smack comes." The mooring-buoy was now alongside.
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