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The first thing which occupied his attention on board of the tender was to look round upon the lighthouse, which he saw, with some degree of emotion and surprise, now vying in height with the beacon-house; for although he had often viewed it from the extremity of the western railway on the rock, yet the scene, upon the whole, seemed far more interesting from the tender's moorings at the distance of about half a mile.
A number of the watch on deck were strung along the rail, and the officers did not forbid their cheering the members of the wrecked tender's crew. "Welcome home again, Mr. MacMasters!" was the greeting of the officer of the watch as the ensign led his party up the ladder. "And mighty glad we are to get here," declared Ensign MacMasters.
It seemed curious that there were not more passengers on the tender's deck; but perhaps he and Liane were among the first to come aboard; after all, they were not to sail before morning, according to the women. He apprehended a tedious time of waiting before he gained his berth. He noticed, too, a life ring lettered SYBARITE, and thought this an odd name for a vessel of commercial utility.
On writing this letter and schedule, a signal was made on the beacon for the landing-master's boat, which immediately came to the rock, and the schedule was afterwards stuck up in the tender's galley.
"Who's the captain here?" called Dave, racing across the landing stage to the tender's gangplank. "I am, sir," replied a portly, red-faced Englishman, leaning out of the wheel-house window. "What'll you charge to land us in haste aboard the American battleship 'Massachusetts'?" asked Darrin eagerly.
Then I landed again, helped in Miss Trevor and Miss Thorn, leaving the Celebrity for the last, and was pulling for the yacht when a cry from the tender's stern arrested me. "Mr. Crocker, they are sailing away without us!" I turned in my seat. The Maria's mainsail was up, and the jib was being hoisted, and her head was rapidly falling off to the wind. Farrar was casting.
"Half a sov. will be about right, sir," replied the tender's skipper, touching his cap at sight of the American Naval uniform. "Good enough," glowed Dave, leaping aboard. "Cast off as quickly as you can, captain, or we'll be in a heap of trouble with our discipline officers." The English skipper was quick to act. He routed out two deckhands, who quickly cast off.
He crouched low in the blind for five minutes without getting a shot, rose and looked for the tender. To his horror he saw her drifting helpless before the wind, her engine stopped and both men waving frantically their signals of distress. "My God!" he exclaimed. "The tender's engine is broken down." Bivens rose and looked in the direction Stuart pointed. "Why don't the fools use the oars?"
A few score of the passengers left her; with their baggage they formed picturesque groups on the tender's deck, and they set out for the shore waving their hands and their handkerchiefs to the friends they left clustering along the rail of the Norumbia. Mr. and Mrs.
Another group stripped off the tarpaulins from the piles of luggage, and a third the gangplank in place swarmed about the heaps of trunks, shouldering the separate pieces as ants shoulder grains of sand, then scurrying toward the tender's rail, where other ants reached down and relieved them of their loads.
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