He lit a pipe. Having disposed of the fragments of the bottle, he got the mop and a bucket of water and swabbed the rum-stained deck. Then he took his seat forward and watched the sunset.
The great sun, half-shorn of his beams and bulging broad as Jupiter, lolled above the reef in a sky of laburnum gold fading to aquamarine. Gulls, dark as withered leaves, blew about him, and shifting here and there to north and south became gulls of gold, while the wind blowing up from the gulf and the westward running current, meeting the last of the flood, broke the sea surface into a million tiny dancing waves, momentary mirrors dazzling the eye with shattered light.
Lone Reef seemed well named. Dawn or sunset or the blaze of full day could not take from its desolation, and this evening the sinister line of the wreck dominated everything, turning the blaze of sunset to the light of a funeral pyre.
The Sarah, moving to the swell, creaked and whimpered, and now and then from below he could hear voices,—Jude’s voice and the voice of Satan. Beyond that came the murmur of the reef and the clang of the gulls, and now and again a snatch of Spanish song from the Juan.
Then the sun passed below the reef, the tide began to draw out, and the Sarah, swinging to it, brought to his view the Juan and the Natchez, ships of dusk in a world of dusk powdered with star dust. Presently a light was run up on the Natchez, then the Juan put up her riding light, then Satan appeared, a dusky form, rising from the cabin hatch and followed by Jude.
They came forward. Jude squatted on the deck, and Satan drew close to Ratcliffe.
“Now, if them skunks had any sense in their skulls, they’d stick out a guard boat,” said Satan; “but I’ve fair put the hood on them, I b’lieve, and they’ve never saw what I was after, pretendin’ I had no oil for an anchor light. Why, they are only fit to be put out to nuss! Half an hour more and we’ll be off.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“Knock the shackle off the anchor chain an’ let her drift. Tide an’ current is runnin’ four knots.”
“But even without the anchor light they’ll be able to see us by the stars.”
“Lord bless you! at this distance they won’t be able to see mor’n a glimpse of us. We’ll go so gradual they won’t notice. If they keep a lookout at all,—which they won’t, ten to one,—he’ll see us by believin’ we’re there.”
“Lord! I’d love to see their faces in the morning!” murmured Jude.
“But won’t they go for you when we get back to Havana?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Not they,” said Satan. “They’ll say nothin’, seein’ as how they’re done and the laugh’s against them. Why, Cark will respect me more for this job than if I’d run straight with him over the biggest deal. If it’d been the other way about and he’d pulled the dollars off me, I’d have been nowhere with him. Mind you out here, if I was to stick here till tomorrow, they’d be aboard and maybe manhandling us if I didn’t bail up; but back in Havana the thing will be closed and the accounts wrote off.”
The sound of a guitar came through the dusk, crossing the warm wind, the lazy, languorous wind of a perfect summer’s night. Seville, which he had never seen, rose before Ratcliffe, firefly-haunted orange groves, lovely women all skewered together by the remembered words of a ribald song.
“There goes old Catguts,” said Satan. “He’s the band aboard the Juan,—Antonio, Alonzo, Alphonso—damn his name!”
“It ain’t,” said Jude. “It’s that old copper-patch Cleary’s got with him. I’ve heard him in harbor. I gave him a plug of tobacco once for getting me some bait, and he showed me the thing. It’s got a crack in it or suthin’, and makes a noise like a skeeter in a jug,—kind a fizzin’ noise between the plonks. He’s got an ulster on his leg so’s you can see the bone. He took off the rags an’ showed me—he’s a Portugee.”
“Well, it’s time to get busy,” said Satan. “Here, h’ist yourself and lend a hand!”
Ratcliffe got more forward while they knocked the shackle off the chain. There came a splash. Then the meeting resumed.
“If they heard that splash,” said Satan, “they’d put it down to a fish jumpin’. Now you watch them lights.”
Ratcliffe watched the amber lights of the Natchez and Juan. They did not seem to alter position in the least. In the first of the starlight and the last of the dusk the spars and hulls of the two vessels could just be made out.
Then presently he saw that the lights had drawn a bit more aft and seemed closer together. The feel of the Sarah was different too, she moved more freely to the swell.
The sound of the guitar seemed slightly fainter.
Now and then the beguiling sea would give the Sarah a little slap, no louder than the slap of a girl’s hand, on the low planking as if joking with her over some secret shared in common.
Yes, the sound of the guitar was fainter, much fainter, and the spars and hulls of the vessels now invisible as though they had been dissolved in the gloom.
The anchor lights alone marked their places.
“We’re all right now,” said Satan; “but I’ll give them another five minutes. Got the matches for the binnacle light?”
“Yes,” said Jude.
Five minutes passed, then they got the canvas on her, and Satan, at the wheel, taking his bearings from the far-off lights of the betrayed ones, turned the spokes.
“Where are you going to sail for?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Cormorant Cay,” said Satan. “I’ve a fancy to look at that place.”