CHAPTER XXVIII

WEST

They watched him row off to the _Santa Margharita_.

It was still a flat calm, and the _Santa Margharita_ lay, the looking glass of the sea mirroring her ugliness, and a slight swell rolling her to show her foul copper sheathing.

They saw Pirelli go on board and vanish below. A minute later the water poured at her stern, and they heard the tramp of her engine.

"She's making off back to Genoa," said Sam. "I wonder if Visconti is on board."

"Most likely," replied Bobby. "And I wonder would it have been better to have given him something to keep him quiet."

"You mean the Aphrodite?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's a thing I couldn't do," replied Sam. "It's not only that the chap played me such a dirty trick. It's just this: If I had consented to a thing like that, it would have been practically going partners with him. I draw the line at that. If we are caught we are at least caught playing our own game and not confederates of a rogue like that."

"That's just how I feel," put in Martia, "and I think it was splendid the way you turned him down straight without a moment's hesitation."

Bobby felt out of count. He also felt that he was figuring in Martia's eyes as a somewhat sordid person ready to buy safety at too high a price. All the same, he did not draw back from the position he had taken, though he said nothing more as he stood watching the last of the _Santa Margharita_ vanishing now beyond the cape that hid Genoa.

The calm still held the _Lorna_ in its grip. If Visconti, turning vicious, chose to apprise the Genoese port authorities, nothing could be easier than for the Customs to send a fast launch out and capture the _Lorna_ where she lay. She was beyond the three-mile limit, but port authorities don't bother about the fraction of a mile, and there are no mile-stones, anyway, to show exactly where the limit begins.

"All the same," said Bobby, "I believe we will have trouble with that chap yet. From what we know of him, he seems to be an extremely wily bird, and he's got power behind him. Anyway, he's able to do things. Look at his record. He gets word of Hyalos by some chance. He fits out the _Margharita_. He engages those sponge-fishers from Ægina to meet him there. He comes to Hyalos and finds us on the spot. He gets you, Sam, on to his ship and hypnotises you with the aid of champagne into telling him the whole of our business. I'm not rubbing it in, Sam, I'm just showing you the man we have to deal with. What does he do then? Fancying that we have scooped everything of value in Hyalos he vanishes, to swoop on us at Genoa in the form of Pirelli. We have escaped for a moment, but it's my opinion we haven't done with him yet."

"I don't see what he can do now," replied the skipper; "unless he goes back now and gives the show away to the harbour people at Genoa. Even then he'd have to get a warrant to arrest us. That all takes time. Anyhow, once we are clear away from here we're safe."

"How about England? It will take us three weeks to get home, and he can get there in two days from here, overland."

Sam did not reply to this. His eyes had caught sight of something far away to the east, a dulling of the water beyond the sea dazzle. It was the wind.

In a moment the _Lorna_ was alive again, the hands hauling on the halyards and the great mainsail rising like a kite to the blue; the gaskets were cast off the jib, and Sam sprang to the wheel as the forefoot of the breeze struck them, and the banging of blocks and the creak of cordage sounded as the main boom lifted and shifted, sweeping across the deck to starboard, the sail filling and tugging at the sheet.

The _Lorna_ sprang away like a spurred horse.

When the east wind comes like that in the Mediterranean, after a calm, it blows.

The _Lorna_ was running almost rail under. Down below, things that had not been secured were fetching away, and Sam, for a moment, was in two minds about reducing sail. But he held on.

Then the first great booming gusts flattened down into a strong, steady sailing wind, and handing the wheel over to Bowler, he turned to talk to the others.

They were safe, for the moment at least. With the start they had, and the speed they were making, no boat out of Genoa would overhaul them before they had cleared Italian waters. Later that afternoon, away to starboard, the Maritime Alps showed the spur they push towards Oneglia, and that night, hauling closer inshore, they saw a spray of light through the night glass, a glittering ribbon--the lights of Monte Carlo.

At dawn, in cloudless weather, Antibes showed away on the starboard quarter; then Cape Camarat loomed across the blue, and far ahead the islands of Hyères beckoned to them, rose from the sea, and sank behind them. Whatever they had done at Hyalos they had not offended the gods who preside over the winds of the Mediterranean, for the wind from the east and south of east never failed them. It held true and hard and steady as they passed the Balearics and gave Cape Nao the good-bye, pursued them, laughing and shouting, past Cape Palos; showed them the cold, white ridges of the Sierra Nevada on the northern sky-line, chased them at last through the straits into the arms of the gods who rule the Atlantic.

Then things became different, with a dirty sky and head winds against which they had to fight from St. Vincent to Finisterre.

Then the Bay of Biscay played with them for five long days, with light and variable winds and a ground swell that seemed to have come up from Cape Horn.

Ushant passed them on into a fog, and the chance of being rammed by everything turning that villainous corner. Then the fog, like a suddenly raised dish-cover, lifted, and behold they were in a world of east wind, blue sky, and hard, emerald sea; a cold, bright beautiful world with winter-locked England a line on the horizon to port.

Then came the Dorset coast, and next morning at dawn the Isle of Wight far ahead, the Needles light just winking out, and Poole Harbour only four or five hours' sail away.

Down in the cabin, over an early breakfast, with the deck in charge of Bowler, Sam gave it as his opinion that, barring some catastrophe unimagined and inconceivable, the expedition was over and a success.

"Unless," put in Bobby, "that beast of a Visconti doesn't play us some last trick."

"There's only one trick he can play us," said Sam, "and that's Customs. And I know the Customs men at Poole. And, besides, this has nothing to do with Customs, although the Government, if they were to be applied to by the Greek Government, might use the Customs to collar the things pending investigations. I don't believe that trouble will arise."

"Well, suppose it doesn't?" asked Bobby. "What are we to do with the things when we arrive? We've got to get them ashore and put them somewhere till we are able to see Behrens and ask how they are to be disposed of."

"I thought of that only yesterday," replied the other. "I asked Bowler did he know of any place handy for storing things. And there's a cottage close to his that's empty. We can shove them there. They'd be safe as houses whilst we run up to Town, for he'll be there to look after them."

A couple of hours later, as they stood on deck, the sandbanks showed ahead, and the entrance to the great harbour, lying idle, wrapped in its winter sleep.

Only gulls greeted them as they came in, gulls from Brownsea Island and the slob lands and sandbanks, crying and creaking on the cold east wind, flying across the cloudless blue against which stood Corfe Castle in the far distance.

Sam steered, with Bowler for'ard on the look-out; Bobby and the girl standing by, as they picked their way by the sea marks that showed the road to Poole town.

Martia, wrapped in a heavy coat of Sam's, scarcely spoke a word. They were home at last, safe home, and against that background of winter land and flying gulls the whole remembered picture of the last few months seemed unbelievable. They were home with everything they had started to do accomplished. Home, with no one to greet them but the gulls.

The tide was coming in with them, gurgling against the stakes and sea-marks. The _Sandfly_ showed close at her anchorage, snugged down for winter, and near the _Sandfly_ a barge swung, turning to the tide on her chain, dead and cheerless-looking as a coffin. And now the quay of Poole, with an old brig moored alongside, could be clearly seen, even to its bollards, but with not a soul moving on it.

"Ready there with the anchor?" came Sam's voice.

Then, a moment later, the call to let go, a splash, and the rattle of the chain, and the _Lorna Doone_ swung to her moorings, the canvas slatting in the wind, and the long voyage over.

And still not a soul on the shore to see them or a voice to greet them.

Bowler, Church, Atherfield, and Glastonbury, as indifferent to the whole business as Poole itself, dropped below to get their dunnage together, after having stowed the canvas.

Sam lit a pipe.

"Well, here we are," said Sam. "I said she was a beauty, and she is."

"Who?" asked Martia, astonished at this cryptic remark.

"Who? Why, the _Lorna_. Close-hauled or going with the wind she's not to be beaten."

"That's so," said Bobby; "and look."

A figure showed on the quay. It came along to the boat steps, got into a scow that was moored there, and pushed off, rowing towards them.

It was Bowler's brother.

Not a word of welcome as he came alongside, scarcely a nod. They might have just come back from a sail in the Solent for all the emotion exhibited by Bowler's brother on their return.

"Hallo!" said Sam.

"Hallo!" answered the brother of Bowler.

"I'll be wanting you to help us take some things on shore," said Sam.

"Right y'are," said the longshoreman, taking in his oars and tying up to a channel-plate, whilst the fo'c'sle crowd came up from below with their bags.

Bowler himself came last.

"When I've got the chaps ashore, sir," he said, "I'll come back to do any cleanin'-up there's to be done, and to help you ashore with them bits of things. Glastonbury's willin' to stay and look after the ship till this evenin', if you're wantin' him."

"Right," said Sam. "I'll pay you off to-night at the inn. Tell them we'll be coming off in an hour or so, and we'll be staying the night, and we'll want dinner. I'll want you to come on board this evening when Glastonbury goes and stay as watchman. We'll get some of the things off before dark and the rest in the morning. Church, I'll want you to help us. Go off and see your wife now, but I'll want you at four o'clock."

"Right, sir," said Church.

Then the crew, getting into the boat--but not before Martia had shaken hands with each one of them--pushed off, the boat having orders to return in an hour.

"'Them bits of things,'" quoted Martia with a laugh. "Could we have found a port in the whole world safer than here--for our purpose?"

"No," said Bobby, "we couldn't."