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Updated: May 29, 2025
Had they admitted that they had devoted a whole day to searching over the barren for the body of Foxey Jack Quinn a suspicion that the missing man had carried away something of extraordinary value would have fired the harbor and set every able-bodied inhabitant on the quest. That would not have suited the skipper's plans.
We've gambled on the hills and in the valleys and on the sea-shore, and out of sight of land mostly fair. Generally it's good enough. We began in Nicaragua first, after we left that schooner and her fool errand. There were one hundred and twenty-seven sovereigns and some Mexican dollars in that skipper's cash-box.
He chuckled some time before he answered, and his chuckle grew to a laugh. "Ha! ha! ha! that ar light is on Boatswain's Reef, just as sure as my name is Phil Grayson. Mr Clare hurrah! your boys are safe." Ugly, who had been lifted on board before that, joined his rejoicing bark to the skipper's merriment, and from the reef came a distant hallooing. The flames at the reef grew brighter and higher.
The captain could stand upon the hurricane deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five or six orders while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's reign was over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river, she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot.
"No, sir, I don't think I shall," I replied to this panegyric on the doomed vessel, quite appreciating all the skipper's feelings of regret at her destruction; but just then the flames with a roar rushed up the main hatch, approaching towards the poop every moment nearer and nearer. This at once recalled Captain Billings from the past to the present.
"Lay there, ye scum!" cried Black Dennis Nolan, breathing heavily, and wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand. "Lay there an' be damned to ye, if ye t'ink ye kin say 'nay' when Dennis Nolan says 'aye. If it didn't be for the childern ye bes father of, an' yer poor, dacent woman, I'd t'row ye over the cliff." Foxey Jack Quinn was in no condition to reply to the skipper's address.
This done, the searchers made their way down stream and crossed to the main, there separating into two parties, one of which was to skirt the shore to the northward and westward, whilst the other was to proceed in the opposite direction until the two parties reunited; their object being not so much to look out seaward for they knew that if the raft had missed the island it would by that time be far enough away but rather to examine the shore for any sign of wreckage or the poor skipper's dead body.
"Do you all agree?" yelled Forsythe wildly in his excitement. "Yes, yes," they acclaimed. "Take charge, and get us out o' these seas. Who wants to be locked up?" "All right," said Forsythe. "Then I'm the commander. Lift that baby down to the skipper's room with the sick woman, and let them nurse each other. Lift Jenkins out of the wardroom, and stow him in a forecastle bunk.
"It's the skipper's business, I suppose, but I don't hold with takin' any chances you don't have to," was the gruff comment, "an' if you'll take the advice of an old hand at the game you'll keep away." "But I want to go so much, Hank," came the reply. "What for?"
So saying, I descended the poop ladder and, entering the cabin, made my way to the skipper's state-room, and, opening a desk which I found there, soon discovered the genuine set of papers declaring the ship's name to be the Preciosa, her port of registry Havana, and her ownership Spanish.
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