Part 26 (1/2)
”She's like the big Spanish boats and has their tall black funnel.”
”She's very like them,” Jake agreed. ”There's no smoke, and no wash about her. It looks as if they'd had some trouble in the engine-room and she'd stopped.”
d.i.c.k nodded and glanced across the dazzling water towards the high, blue coast. He did not think the steamer could be seen from the land, and the launch would, no doubt, be invisible from her deck, but this was not important and he began to calculate how long it would take them to reach a point ahead. Some time later, he looked round again. The steamer was fading in the distance, but no smoke trailed behind her and he did not think she had started yet. His attention, however, was occupied by the headland he was steering for, because he thought it marked the neighborhood of their port.
He spent an hour in the place before he finished his business and started home, and when they were about half-way across the bay the light began to fade. The sun had sunk and the high land cut, harshly blue, against a saffron glow; the sea was shadowy and colorless in the east. Presently Jake, who sat facing aft, called out:
”There's a steamer's masthead light coming up astern of us. Now I see her side lights, and by the distance between them she's a big boat.”
d.i.c.k changed his course, because the steamer's three lights would not have been visible unless she was directly following him and the launch's small yellow funnel and dingy white topsides would be hard to distinguish. When he had shut out one of the colored side lights and knew he was safe, he stopped the engine to wait until the vessel pa.s.sed. There was no reason why he should do so, but somehow he felt interested in the s.h.i.+p. Lighting his pipe, he studied her through the gla.s.ses, which he gave to Jake.
”She's the boat we saw before,” he said.
”That's so,” Jake agreed. ”Her engines are all right now because she's steaming fast.”
d.i.c.k nodded, for he had marked the ma.s.s of foam that curled and broke away beneath the vessel's bow, but Jake resumed: ”It looks as if her dynamo had stopped. There's nothing to be seen but her navigation lights and she's certainly a pa.s.senger boat. They generally glitter like a gin-saloon.”
The s.h.i.+p was getting close now and d.i.c.k, who asked for the gla.s.ses, examined her carefully as she came up, foreshortened, on their quarter.
Her dark bow looked very tall and her funnel loomed, huge and shadowy, against the sky. Above its top the masthead light shed a yellow glimmer, and far below, the sea leapt and frothed about the line of hull. This drew out and lengthened as she came abreast of them, but now he could see the tiers of pa.s.senger decks, one above the other, there was something mysterious in the gloom that reigned on board. No ring of light pierced her long dark side and the gangways behind the rails and rows of stanchions looked like shadowy caves. In the open s.p.a.ces, forward and aft, however, bodies of men were gathered, their clothes showing faintly white, but they stood still in a compact ma.s.s until a whistle blew and the indistinct figures scattered across the deck.
”A big crew,” Jake remarked. ”Guess they've been putting them through a boat or fire drill.”
d.i.c.k did not answer, but when the vessel faded into a hazy ma.s.s ahead he started the engine and steered into her eddying wake, which ran far back into the dark. Then after a glance at the compa.s.s, he beckoned Jake.
”Look how she's heading.”
Jake told him and he nodded. ”I made it half a point more to port, but this compa.s.s swivels rather wildly. Where do you think she's bound?”
”To Santa Brigida; but, as you can see, not direct. I expect her skipper wants to take a bearing from the Adexe lights. You are going there and her course is the same as ours.”
”No,” said d.i.c.k; ”I'm edging in towards the land rather short of Adexe.
As we have the current on our bow, I want to get hold of the beach as soon as I can, for the sake of slacker water. Anyway, a big boat would keep well clear of the sh.o.r.e until she pa.s.sed the Tajada reef.”
”Then she may be going into Adexe for coal.”
”That vessel wouldn't float alongside the wharf, and her skipper would sooner fill his bunkers where he'd get pa.s.sengers and freight.”
”Well, I expect we'll find her at Santa Brigida when we arrive.”
They looked round, but the sea was now dark and empty and they let the matter drop. When they crossed the Adexe bight no steamer was anch.o.r.ed near, but a cl.u.s.ter of lights on the dusky beach marked the coaling wharf.
”They're working late,” d.i.c.k said. ”Can you see the tug?”
”You'd have to run close in before you could do so,” Jake replied. ”I expect they're tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the coal the collier landed into the sheds.”
”It's possible,” d.i.c.k agreed, and after hesitating for a few moments held on his course. He remembered that one can hear a launch's engines and the splash of torn-up water for some distance on a calm night.
After a time, the lights of Santa Brigida twinkled ahead, and when they steamed up to the harbor both looked about. The American collier and a big cargo-boat lay with the reflections of their anchor-lights quivering on the swell, but there was no pa.s.senger liner to be seen. A man came to moor the launch when they landed, and Jake asked if the vessel he described had called.
”No, senor,” said the man. ”The only boats I know like that are the Cadiz liners, and the next is not due for a fortnight.”