Harold Bindloss - The Dust of Conflict

“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 to put her on the wind. Is that smoke rising any?”

Appleby fancied it was, for the dusky smear had lengthened, and it seemed to him there was something more solid than vapor in the midst of it. The skipper, however, in view of the inadvisability of bringing the great mainsail crashing over, could not turn his head.

“Still, even if it is a gunboat, we should be well in with the land before she overhauls us,” said Appleby.

“Yes,” said Harper grimly. “The trouble is there’s no water yet into the creek, and there’ll be a blame nasty surf running into the bay. Still, there’s a place where we could hold her to it with two anchors down, and it would take good eyes to make us out against the land. It’s just a question whether those fellows yonder see us first.”

It appeared to Appleby a somewhat important one, but he had to wait for the answer with the rest, and by and by it came. The man on the cross-trees shouted, the smear of smoke seemed to break in two, as though the vessel beneath it had changed her direction, and she became visible in a moment or two, a faint dark blur upon the moonlit water. Harper turned his head swiftly, and his face showed very grim in the moonlight when he stared in front of him again.

“I guess our chances have gone down fifty cents in the dollar,” he said. “Get a range of cable up on deck. Then we’ll have the boat cleared handy and the hatch-wedges out.”

The men became busy amidst a rattle of chain, and then stood where it was a little dryer between the masts, with their shadows lying black upon the silvery cloths of the foresail. They were watching the steamer, which was rising upon one quarter with the smear of smoke blowing away from her. Appleby could see her plainly now, a strip of black hull that rolled with slanted spars across the harmonies of blue and silver – and she seemed to him portentous in her shadowiness, for there was no blink of light on board her.

“The ‘Enseñada’?” said Harper.

“Si, señor!” said Rosendo, with a little gesture which was very expressive.

Harper pulled at the wheel, and Appleby saw that he was addressing him.

“There are two of their gunboats on this coast, and it’s quite in the usual course that it’s the one I don’t want to see that turns up,” he said. “Her commander has a little grievance against me.”

Appleby did not ask him what it was. He had something else to think of, and the swift upward lurches and wisps of spray that blew about the “Ventura” made conversation difficult. The seas also seemed to be growing steeper as she closed with the land, and washed in as they went smoking past. Still, but for that sinister shape steadily rising higher on one quarter he could have found pleasure in the scene. The wail of wind, the humming of the shrouds, patter of spray, and roar of frothy seas stirred the blood in him, while the swift reeling rush when the bows went up brought him a curious sense of exultation.

It was stress and effort of muscle and body he had hungered for in the sleepy English town, for slow endurance was nothing new to him, and he was apparently to get it now. There was a meaning in the tense black figures of the men, and the grim impassiveness of Harper’s face as he stiffened his grasp on the wheel, for human fibre was under strain as well as hemp and wood and metal, which groaned under the pressure which racked them to the uttermost limit. Yet while the gunboat crept up astern Appleby felt at home, as though this was not a novel sensation, and he had been through it all, or something very similar, more than once before. The fixed look in the eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, the set faces, and the rigidity of the men’s pose appeared in a curious fashion familiar.