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Updated: June 30, 2025
And now what the sailors call a "chopping sea" had set in with the turn of the tide, although the wind was still off-shore; so that even to lie to at the mouth made rather a ticklish job of it.
It all seemed promising enough, but somehow the King couldn't be quite easy. "You'll excuse me a minute," said the King, and went outside to hear the report. The weather had been flat calm all day, with a slow ground-swell running into the cove, but with the cool of the evening a light off-shore breeze had sprung up, and Uncle Billy had just seen the Revenue cutter stealing out from Penzance.
There we lay, with our sides lazily lapping up the burnished water, and throwing it off again in showers of sparkling drops, as we rolled away helplessly in the swell. At the same time a strong current was running, which was setting us imperceptibly off-shore.
You all remember the day, when the gulls flew low, and the wind blew strong from the land, and I could not hold my bidarka against it. I tied the covering of the bidarka about me so that no water could get in, and all of the night I fought with the storm. And in the morning there was no land, only the sea, and the off-shore wind held me close in its arms and bore me along.
He didn't give them the time to trans-ship enough provisions; the weather was calm, the air was charged with dew, and when they cast off the ropes and set sail to a faint off-shore draught there was no flutter in the damp canvas; their old schooner seemed to detach itself gently from the stolen craft and slip away silently, together with the black mass of the coast, into the night.
Even this I had not heard but for the extreme quiet on the sea under the off-shore wind. Gradually, by the light of the stars, I separated from the surrounding shadows that of a whole mass of people inert and darkly crowded there: and then almost as I guessed their business the cliff above me shot up a flame; and their forms and their dismayed upturned faces stood out distinct in the glare of it.
The stranger, who had not apparently before seen us, was not long in following our example. He set his foresail, topgallant-sail, and royal, gaff-topsail and flying-jib, in addition to the canvas he had been before carrying, and, putting down his helm, stood off-shore on a bowline, with the intention of crossing our bows.
"Greetings, O brothers," he said, "brothers of old time before I went away with the off-shore wind." He stepped out with both feet on the sand, and Opee-Kwan waved him back. "Thou art dead, Nam-Bok," he said. Nam-Bok laughed. "I am fat." "Dead men are not fat," Opee-Kwan confessed. "Thou hast fared well, but it is strange.
Three such nights whitened into dawn and showed me no land, and the off-shore wind would not let me go. "And when the fourth day came, I was as a madman. I could not dip my paddle for want of food; and my head went round and round, what of the thirst that was upon me.
And he would reroll and smoke his Government cigarette, placidly non-interferent, thanking his best saint for the happy time to come. And in fine it was managed in this very fashion. The senna steamer hove-to in the twilight some three miles off-shore, and a boat put into the tiny sheltered bay of Cavalleria just two hours after nightfall. The boat scarcely touched the beach.
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