CHAPTER XXIII

THE BOAT FROM ÆGINA

The start was fixed for eight o'clock next morning, immediately after breakfast.

There was nothing to hold them, and now that everything was clear, with a steady glass, a fair wind and a full hold, a strange uneasiness manifested itself amongst the afterguard of the _Lorna Doone_, infecting even Sam.

It was the uneasiness that comes with the all-but-accomplished.

Bobby during the night had dreamed that the _Santa Margharita_ had somehow sunk herself in the reef passage, blocking their exit; Martia at breakfast was silent and Sam fidgety, rising to look at the glass.

The wind that had been blowing from west of north had shifted more to the north, but the glass still held steady.

The skipper returned to his breakfast and the chart which he had unfolded on the cloth. He was in the act of folding it up and rising from the table when Bowler's voice came through the skylight.

"There's a boat comin' up, sir," cried Bowler. "Looks as if she was layin' for the island."

Sam cast the chart on the table and dashed on deck. The others followed him.

Sure enough, away to the nor'-nor'-west, a boat was coming; a fishing-boat, seemingly, lateen rigged, with a vast triangular sail like a swallow's wing pencilling itself against the sky. She was coming with the swiftness of a swallow, and that she was making for Hyalos there could be no doubt.

"She's only some island craft," said Sam. "Heavens, isn't she laying the knots behind her? She's doing twelve, if she's doing an inch."

"Onhandy I call her," said Bowler. "That there yard was never made of a single spar. Where'd she be if it was sprung? It's easy for her goin' as she goes but I'd like to see her on a wind."

"What are you going to do?" asked Bobby.

"How d'you mean?"

"Well, oughtn't we to get out before she comes?"

"Oh, she's all right," replied Sam. "And she's seen us anyway. Better stick and find out what she's after, if she comes here. Ten to one she'll shift her helm."

"Yes," said Martia. "It's better not to run away. Let's just see what they want. Maybe, after all, they are not coming here."

Meanwhile, the sail loomed larger and took on colour. There was some dye in the canvas that now showed deep red and now rose-colour as the great lateen yard swung to the wind. The hull, because of its colour, was scarcely visible though she was coming close in now.

Yes, she was making for Hyalos. She took the passage through the reefs without dropping a shred of canvas, the foam shearing from her stem and the white gulls racing her across the bay in a grand curve, luffed up into the wind and stopped dead. An old stone killick went overside and the lateen yard came down with a run.

"Oh, how beautiful!" cried the girl, lost in admiration of this living thing from the sea, so full of life and speed and the very breath of freedom, yet in a moment tamed and halted. "I have never seen anything so lovely as that. And look at the colours of it!"

The hull of the stranger was painted a green-blue after the fashion of the Italian fishing-boats, turning to a darker tint near the water line. She was open, with a covered-in poop where the steersman stood, the goose-necked tiller still in his hand, and in the well, on the sand ballast, the crew of half a dozen fellows with red handkerchiefs tied round their heads were busy with the lateen yard and getting out a boat.

"They're coming aboard," said Bobby.

"Looks like it," said Sam. "If I didn't know to the contrary, I'd think they had business with us--either friends or going to pirate us."

But the boat that put off was no pirate. Only two fellows were at the oars and a third standing aft, with the steering oar.

It came alongside and hooked on and the steersman, dropping his oar, came overside. A man of thirty or so, bronzed, with curly black hair, rings in his ears and a smile that showed teeth evenly set and white as a hound's.

Facing the strangers, he bowed to Martia, and then went for Sam, who was standing a bit in advance of the others, in an explosion of language that might have been abuse only for his manner.

"He's talking bad Italian," explained Sam to the others after the torrent had lasted for a minute. "Petropolis is his name, as far as I can make out, and he expected to meet us here, and is apologising for being late. Rum business, and wants handling, seems to me."

He drew the newcomer aside, gave him a cigarette and then they talked.

Martia could not understand a word of what they were saying, but she noticed, as the bronzed one talked and gesticulated, that he seemed ill at ease, and now and then, as he swept his hand round indicating Hyalos, his face took on a wild look as though something had frightened him.

The talk lasted five or six minutes. Then it broke off and Sam turned to the others, whilst Petropolis, relighting his cigarette, stood suddenly quiet, his gaze roving about over the details of this strange ship as though whatever he had said had ceased to be of the slightest interest to him.

"Here's a rum yarn," said Sam. "This chap's from Ægina, away up north, and, as far as I can make out, he was hired by an Italian to come down here with his boat and bring four sponge-divers with him to meet a vessel that would be waiting for him here. He was to put in nowhere and say nothing to anyone, but he had to put in to Milo for water, and at Milo one of his men got talking to the fishermen, and let out that they were coming here. The fishermen warned him that Hyalos was haunted or some rot of that sort; that dead men lived here; and that not a fisherman in the islands would go near the place for fear of the bad luck it would bring. He thinks we are the boat he was to meet, and he's tumbling over himself with regrets because his men are nearly in a state of mutiny and the sponge-divers refuse to have anything to do with the place."

"I knew it," cried Martia. "I felt that there was something wrong about that man Visconti. His was the boat they had to meet. Cruising for his health? I never believed it."

"This is a nuisance," said Bobby.

Sam said nothing.

He saw as clearly as the others that the pleasant-spoken Visconti was, a million to one, not after health, but treasure.

The human mind, suddenly brought into juxtaposition with a fateful problem of this nature, often sees instinctively and in a flash its true proportions. Sam saw quite clearly that, though it was a million to one Visconti had come to Hyalos to dive for marbles, it was also a million to one against the probability that his expedition would have synchronised with that of the _Lorna Doone_ by chance.

Hyalos had been lying sealed for two thousand years, yet the _Lorna Doone_ and the _Santa Margharita_ had arrived in the same month and for the same purpose--loot. Common-sense viewing this statement would say at once, "There must be some connection between these two expeditions; the coincidence is too extraordinary."

"Suppose we go down below and talk it over," said Sam.

He followed Martia down below.

"I can't see the sense in this business at all," said he when they were seated. "If that chap was lying, if he was really after the same game as we, why did he sail off and leave us here? He knew that this Petropolis man would be coming along and that, if we met him, we'd guess the truth. Leaving that aside, why didn't he stick till we were gone?"

"Maybe," said Bobby, "he thought we'd been working here and had cleaned out the place. That night you dined with him, did you say by any chance how long we'd been here, or say anything that might have given the show away?"

Sam flushed under his tan.

"Do you think I'm a fool?" he asked.

"Not at all," said Bobby. He did not wish to push the matter, seeing the condition in which the skipper had arrived home that night of the dinner party on board the _Santa Margharita_. All the same, he felt in his heart that Sam somehow or another had told more than he ought.

"Does Petropolis know that we aren't the people he was expecting to meet?" he asked.

"No," replied Sam. "He doesn't. I didn't say a word; just let him run on. He seems to think that the Italian fellow who gave him the order to come here was our agent."

"Then," said Martia, "the thing to do is to pay him anything he wants in reason, and let us get away at once. He can't ask much, as he says his divers refuse to work here."

Sam left the cabin and came back in a minute.

"I've squared him for a thousand lire," said he. "That's ten pounds. The chap's straight enough. He got ten pounds from the agent, whoever he was, and the terms were ten pounds a week, he paying the divers. It took him a week to come down, and it will take him a week to go back."

"Pay him," said Martia.

She fetched the ship's money, part of which was in sovereigns obtained by Behrens from the Bank of England, and they went up. Two minutes later Petropolis, with the money in his pocket, was overboard and rowing for his boat.

The breeze had freshened a bit.

Bowler, with a glance to windward, chuckled.

"It's either row her or tow her out, with the wind as it is," said he. "She come in easy, but it's not easy goin' out with a rig like that. Onhandy, I call her."

"They're getting the sail on her, anyhow," replied Sam, watching as the great lateen yard rose to a chorus like the calling of gulls. "Up goes the killick. Now we'll see."

The stranger, her great sail bellying to the blue, gave a bound like a startled horse and fled away shoreward, making a soldier's wind of it and aiming as if to smash herself on the rocks, came round in a grand curve and up into the wind, the foam racing out behind her as she sped towards the reefs, aiming like an arrow for the channel. Bounding over the slight incoming swell, and seeming to drive right into the wind's eye, she cleared the passage and was away to sea.

Martia, her lips parted and her eyes bright with pleasure, watched the departing one. It was less a ship than a creature, alive, sensitive, beautiful.

Bowler, hit in the place where he kept his predictions, turned away muttering something about the "Flyin' Dutchman."

Then at Sam's orders he went down to attend to the auxiliary engine.

The anchor was hove short and then broken out of the sand, the auxiliary got to work, and the _Lorna_, with Sam at the wheel, turned her nose to the break in the reefs.

Outside and beyond danger, the canvas went up and the ketch took the wind, heeling to port and with her nose to the west.

They were out at last and free, at least for the moment. Hyalos astern and far away towards the north the Greek boat, close-hauled and showing her coloured sail against the pale azure of the horizon sky.

A gull from the island astern, still following them, wheeled with a cry, drifted on the wind and then passed away, leaving them alone to pursue their course across a sea desolate as when the _Argo_ had sailed it in pursuit of the Golden Fleece.