In Hazard Read Online Free PDF Page A

was a rare and magnificent thing. But it did not move him as the naked dolphins had done.
II
    It took them four days to reach San Salvador.
    They seemed now to have passed through the little oasis of summer: it was succeeded by a grey, south-easterly swell, and a fresh breeze; and the weather was cloudy, with occasional showers. But there was no reason to expect really bad weather: the hurricane season had finished at least a fortnight ago, nor was the swell of the long, oily type that presages a tropical storm, nor were the clouds of an ominous appearance. It was invigorating weather, that is all.
    Ship’s routine was again in full swing. At meals no one spoke to the Captain unless first addressed. Captain Edwardes was not privately a forbidding person, or even an impressive one; but his office was.
    Captain Edwardes had not that naturally sovereign look which many sailors wear. He was a small man, rather cherubic, but dark. His eyes were bright, but it looked the brightness of excitement rather than of strength; and if his position had let him, one could see he would have been very affable. He was a native of Carmarthenshire: and for a Norfolk man, like Dick Watchett, it was anyhow difficult to revere a Welshman. The Chief Officer, on the other hand, Mr. Buxton, hailed from his own county: Dick would secretly have rather seen him in command.
    Mr. Foster, too, the Second Officer—a solid, North-of-England man—he also looked a highly efficient seaman.
    But an unprejudiced physiognomist, looking round the saloon for someone on whom to place implicit reliance, would almost certainly have chosen the small, lean Devonian, the supernumerary Mr. Rabb, with his steady and brilliant blue eyes, and his firm jaw, his look rather of a naval officer than a mercantile one.
    There was only one unpleasing thing about Mr. Rabb: his nails were always bitten right down to the quick.
    It was two in the morning when they picked up the light on San Salvador. They left it ten or twelve miles to the eastward, passing between that island and Rum Cay, whose twin white cliffs just showed in the first of the morning light. They were now well among the islands, though keeping clear of all of them: the blue tower on Bird Rock was abeam soon after breakfast. The weather was still showery, with a moderate wind and swell: and for the rest of the day they sighted nothing, till they saw the tall tower on Castle Island at four in the afternoon.
    Dick had never seen the West Indies before: it was disappointing to see now nothing of all those halcyon isles but an occasional light-house, or a low smudge on the sea, through rain.
    At nine in the evening they were to the eastward of Cape Maysi, the easternmost extremity of Cuba, and entered into that broad channel between Cuba and Hayti which is known as the Windward Passage. The Cape itself lies too low to be seen in the darkness: but the dim tiers of the Purial mountains rose one behind the other against the lighter sky.
    It was after five the next morning, and just getting light, when they passed to the east of Navassa Island; a barren limestone sponge, between Jamaica and Hayti. That was the last land they would see before they reached Colon, the entrance to the Panama Canal (where Mr. Rabb was to join his own ship). Ahead of them lay a short passage across the empty Caribbean sea—a passage of about forty-eight hours.
    All that day it blew fresh from the north-east, and the black sea was rough. But what are a rough sea and half a gale to a fine modern vessel like the “Archimedes”? Enough to show her good qualities, not more: enough to prevent life on board her from being enervating. The wind whistled in the wires, and spray swept the foredeck, occasionally slapping some injudicious Chinaman as he tried to cross the well in his papery cotton clothes. It was enough to make Dick Watchett, on the bridge, feel himself a mariner; to blow away the lugubrious notion that a sailor’s life