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I'll engineer the thing from this bed if you'll let me put my oar in your trouble; I'll victual her, and find a crew three quarter price of any of those d d skulking agents. Oh, I'll take a commission right enough, but I'm half paid with doing the thing." He ceased, for footsteps sounded in the passage outside, and Captain Stannistreet was shown in.
When he had approached near enough, Stannistreet put the helm down and brought the schooner to, with her sails all shivering. He took his place in the bow of the whale-boat and Lestrange in the stern. The boat was lowered, the falls cast off, and the oars bent to the water. The little dinghy made a mournful picture as she floated, looking scarcely bigger than a walnut shell.
"That's strange," said Stannistreet, who did not like the conversation over-much, being simply a schooner captain and a plain man, though intelligent enough and sympathetic. "This something tells me," went on Lestrange, "that there is danger threatening the " He ceased, paused a minute, and then, to Stannistreet's relief, went on.
Lestrange felt like a person in a dream, and these people who were interesting themselves in his affairs seemed to him beneficent beyond the nature of human beings. "Is Captain Stannistreet home, think you?" "I don't know," replied the woman; "but I can go see." "Do." She went. "He lives only a few doors down," said Fountain, "and he's the man for you.
It became the lightest sailing breeze, just sufficient to keep the sails drawing, and the wake rippling and swirling behind. Suddenly Stannistreet, who had been standing talking to Lestrange, climbed a few feet up the mizzen ratlins, and shaded his eyes. "What is it?" asked Lestrange. "A boat," he replied. "Hand me that glass you will find in the sling there."
Best schooner captain ever sailed out of 'Frisco. The Raratonga is the name of the boat I have in my mind best boat that ever wore copper. Stannistreet is captain of her, owners are M'Vitie. She's been missionary, and she's been pigs; copra was her last cargo, and she's nearly discharged it.
"If I talk like that you will think I am not right in my head: let us pass the subject by, let us forget dreams and omens and come to realities. You know how I lost the children; you know how I hope to find them at the place where Captain Fountain found their traces? He says the island was uninhabited, but he was not sure." "No," replied Stannistreet, "he only spoke of the beach." "Yes.
Suppose they were like that, would it not be a cruelty to bring them to what we call civilisation?" "I think it would," said Stannistreet. Lestrange said nothing, but continued pacing the deck, his head bowed and his hands behind his back. One evening at sunset, Stannistreet said: "We're two hundred and forty miles from the island, reckoning from to-day's reckoning at noon.
On the morning of the third day it breezed up from the nor'-nor'west, and they continued their course, a cloud of canvas, every sail drawing, and the music of the ripple under the forefoot. Captain Stannistreet was a genius in his profession; he could get more speed out of a schooner than any other man afloat, and carry more canvas without losing a stick.
In thirty strokes the whaleboat's nose was touching her quarter. Stannistreet grasped her gunwale. In the bottom of the dinghy lay a girl, naked all but for a strip of coloured striped material. One of her arms was clasped round the neck of a form that was half hidden by her body, the other clasped partly to herself, partly to her companion, the body of a baby.
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