The Dust of Conflict. Harold Bindloss

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       VI—THE SCHOONER “VENTURA”

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      THE night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired when the schooner “Ventura” headed for the land. It rose in places, black and sharp against the velvety indigo, over her dipping bows, though most of the low littoral was wrapped in obscurity. Harper, the American skipper, leaned upon the helm watching the growing brightness in the east, and a man whose white garments cut against the dusky sea sat upon the rail close beside him. They were both anxious, for there were no lights on that strip of Cuban coast, and the “Ventura” had drifted with the stream in a calm which had complicated Harper’s reckoning. He had to find a certain reef-studded bay, and run the schooner into a creek among the mangroves without being seen by the gunboat which he had reason to surmise was looking out for him.

      Forward, a cluster of men were sitting about the windlass and leaning on the rail. They were of diverse nationality and doubtful character—American, Castilian, and African by extraction, though in the case of some of uncertain color it would have been difficult to decide which blood predominated in their veins. It was their task to supply the insurgents with the munitions of war, and they undertook it dispassionately, without any patriotic convictions, for the dollars it would bring. Indeed, most of them were not held in much esteem in the countries they belonged to, or they would not in all probability have been there on board the “Ventura.”

      Appleby watched them languidly from where he sat behind the wheel, and wondered what lay before him when he glanced towards the dusky coast-line. He was, however, not unduly anxious, for he had cut himself adrift from the cramped life he had led, and as yet found the new one pleasant. It needed qualities he felt he possessed, and which, indeed, he had with difficulty held in due subjection in England; while the fact that it might at any time terminate suddenly caused him no great concern. In the meanwhile the risks and opportunities attached to it had their charm for one who had long found poverty and the restraints of conventionality irksome.

      “We’ll have the moon up in ten minutes,” said Harper, as the “Ventura” swung up on a frothing sea. “That would suit us if we were in the bay, but I’m not certain where we’re heading for just now. You still think that was Sparto Point we saw at dusk, Rosendo?”

      The man who sat upon the rail shook his head. “Who knows!” he said. “If she is not the Sparto she may be the Playa Santiago, or the Cameron.”

      Harper turned to Appleby with a little gesture of resignation. “You hear him. He’s talking,” he said. “Thirty miles more or less don’t count with them. If we don’t get in to-day, we may to-morrow, and if it’s next week nobody’s going to worry. They’ve nice business-like notions in their country.”

      Rosendo laughed. “We not find the Sparto? Good! It is simple. She is farther on. We find her in two or three more hour.”

      “Oh yes!” said Harper. “Still, what I want to know is, what’s going to happen if the gunboat comes along while we’re looking for her? I’ve a notion it might mean a white wall and a firing party.”

      Rosendo shrugged his shoulders, and Appleby glanced towards the east. There was a bank of cloud in that quarter, but the sky above it was a pale luminescent blue. Then he looked astern, and saw the white tops of the seas heave against the darkness, for it was blowing fresh from the north. The “Ventura,” rolling lazily, was running before it with only her boom-foresail and two jibs set, but now and then the crest of a sea that surged past lapped her rail.

      “Wouldn’t she stand more sail?” he said.

      “Oh yes!” said Harper, pointing to the mainsail which lay loose beneath the big boom that swung, banging a little, above them. “It’s there ready. Still, it will be ’most three hours yet before there’s water in, and if the gunboat came along I’d sooner be here, where I’ve room to run, than jammed right up between her and a lee shore. If I was sure that was the high ground behind Point Sparto I’d feel considerably happier.”

      They rolled on awhile, and then a half-moon sailed up. The sea changed to flashing silver, and Harper, leaving the wheel to Rosendo, went up the foremast hoops and swung perched on the cross-trees, black against the night. He came down by and by, and there was relief in his voice.

      “That’s the Point sure enough! We’ll have the mainsail on her, boys,” he said.

      The men came aft in haste. There was a rattle of blocks, and Appleby bent his back among the rest, while the folds of dusky canvas rose thrashing up the mast. They swelled into shape and became at rest, while the schooner, slanting over suddenly, put on speed, and drove away towards the land with a great frothing beneath her rail. She rolled little now, but there was a thud when her bows went down and the spray whirled half the height of her foresail. Appleby felt the exhilaration of swift motion, and his pulses throbbed a trifle faster as he watched the great breadths of canvas that gleamed silver now sway athwart the blue, and the froth swirl past the slender strip of hull that was dwarfed by comparison beneath them. The “Ventura” was very fast, but she could not compete with steam; and he noticed that Harper, who had taken the helm again, every now and then glanced over the rail. He appeared to be staring persistently towards one quarter of the horizon.

      Suddenly a man standing high on the cross-trees shouted, and Appleby, springing to his feet, saw a faint, dusky smear drift athwart the blue and silver, where a minute earlier there had only been sky and water.

      “Smoke!” said Harper. “I don’t know that it’s the ‘Enseñada,’ but I’m taking no chances of meeting her, We’ll have the gaff-topsails up, boys, and the foresail over.”

      He pulled at the wheel. There was a bang as the boom-foresail lurched over, so that it and the big mainsail now swelled on either hand. Then the men swarmed about the deck again, and Appleby wondered a little when amidst a clatter of blocks two more strips of sail went thrashing aloft, for it seemed to him that the “Ventura” was already carrying a risky press of canvas. He, however, pulled among the rest, and it was not until the schooner was clothed with canvas to her topmast heads that he straightened his back and looked about him. As he did so she dipped her bows into a sea, and a cascade poured in forward. It came aft frothing when her head went up, and then as she plunged into the hollow another mass of foam came up astern and surged by a foot above her rail. Harper laughed.

      “Wet feet don’t count in this trade,” he said. “She’s not going to scoop in too much of it if I can keep her running, but you’ll see something very like chaos if we have СКАЧАТЬ