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At this moment a cry from my "Number 1" distracted my attention from the interesting little drama which I was eagerly watching, and, turning toward the harbour's mouth, in response to his pointing finger, I saw a big, four-funnelled, two-masted cruiser, which I instantly recognised as the Bayan, coming foaming out of harbour, evidently intent upon driving off our destroyers, which were now busily launching their boats to save the crew of the destroyer, which had by this time foundered.
In the boat sat Elena with Renditch and beside them stood a long box covered with a black cloth. They rowed for about an hour, and at last reached a small two-masted ship, which was riding at anchor at the very entrance of the harbour. Elena and Renditch got into the ship; the sailors carried in the box. At midnight a storm had arisen, but early in the morning the ship had passed out of the Lido.
No indeed life and travel and memory have offer'd and will preserve to me no deeper-cut incidents, panorama, or sights to cheer my soul, than these at Chicoutimi and Ha-ha bay, and my days and nights up and down this fascinating savage river the rounded mountains, some bare and gray, some dull red, some draped close all over with matted green verdure or vines the ample, calm, eternal rocks everywhere the long streaks of motley foam, a milk-white curd on the glistening breast of the stream the little two-masted schooner, dingy yellow, with patch'd sails, set wing-and-wing, nearing us, coming saucily up the water with a couple of swarthy, black-hair'd men aboard the strong shades falling on the light gray or yellow outlines of the hills all through the forenoon, as we steam within gunshot of them while ever the pure and delicate sky spreads over all.
Out beyond the rocky headlands, in the open sea, the little two-masted smacks were hurrying to anchor or already bobbing up and down with furled canvas, rising, falling and yawing to the pull of the sea. At times, by looking sharply, one could catch the gleam of a fish being pulled in, and sometimes one could hear the muffled thump of the muckle, when the fish was a big one.
However, Denman could still look out through a deadlight. A few hours after the boat's engines had started, he could see a steamer on the horizon, steering a course that would soon intercept that of the destroyer. She was a one-funneled, two-masted craft, a tramp, possibly, a working boat surely; but he only learned when her striped funnel came to view that she belonged to a regular line.
I had indeed, on parting from them, promised to visit them again, but the length of time which had since elapsed had probably extinguished this hope; and they would easily perceive that the great three-masted ship they now saw was not the small two-masted Rurik of their acquaintance.
Then my Indian boatmen interested a crew of six, and I chartered a two-masted canoe-shaped bark called the Xpit. The crew of the Hispaniola, with the never-to-be-forgotten John Silver and the rest of the pirates of Treasure Island, could not have been a more villainous and piratical gang than this of the bark Xpit. I was advised not to take the trip alone.
At 6.20 beat up to quarters, manned the starboard battery, and loaded with five second shell; turned round, stood for the steamer, having previously made her out to be a two-masted side-wheel, of apparent 1,200 tons, though at the distance she was before dark we could not form any correct estimate of her size, &c. At 6.30 the strange steamer hailed and asked, "What steamer is that?"
"What do you make her out?" asked Adair. "A brig or brigantine; a two-masted vessel of some sort," answered Murray. "She is standing this way. I do not altogether like her looks. She has a widespread of white canvas, and so, if she is not a man-of-war, she is a slaver, of that I have little doubt." The crew heard what was said. Murray remained some time longer aloft.
Here and there upon the sea, a black speck marked a herring-boat, drifting with its line of nets; and right off the mouth of the glen, Amyas saw, with a beating heart, a large two-masted vessel lying-to that must be the "Portugal"! Eagerly he looked up the glen, and listened; but he heard nothing but the sweeping of the wind across the downs five hundred feet above, and the sough of the waterfall upon the rocks below; he saw nothing but the vast black sheets of oak-wood sloping up to the narrow blue sky above, and the broad bright hunter's moon, and the woodcocks, which, chuckling to each other, hawked to and fro, like swallows, between the tree-tops and the sky.
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