Trade Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

his ship lay in wait; lights darkened and full steam up, keeping watch on the barely visible break in the long, uneven line of coral cliffs and dark jungle, and rocking idly to the slow-breathing swell that broke lazily and monotonously against the darkened shore.
    There had been little wind that day, or for many days; but an hour ago a breeze had arisen with the rising moon, and now it blew strongly off the land, dispersing at last the stinging, singing cloud of mosquitoes that had been plaguing the watchers, and bringing with it the taint of an odour; rancid, sickly, and entirely horrible.
    “ Strewth! ” muttered the coxswain, grimacing with disgust: “Stinks like a floating sewer, don’t she? Must ‘av a full load on board this trip; and ‘arf of ‘em dead already, I’d say. You’d think them dhows would ‘av more sense than to kill off their own goods, wouldn’t yer?”
    “This one isn’t a dhow,” said Lieutenant Larrimore grimly. “If my information is correct, it’s a bird of a very different feather. Look—”
    The slave ship had edged forward into the unseen passage, and now the moonlight caught her full on and she was no longer a shadowy and unidentifiable shape, but a thing of silver, picking her way cautiously through the narrow channel under jib and foresail, and sounding as she went.
    “Schooner!” exclaimed the coxswain. “I believe it’s—no, it couldn’t be…By goles, sir, I believe it is! Look at the cut of ‘er jib—if that ‘aint the Virago , I’m a Dutchman!”
    “So that negro was right,” said the Lieutenant between his teeth. “It is Frost—we’ve got him at last, and red-handed.”
    He whirled round and yelled: “Up anchor! Headsails out! Full speed ahead!”
    The anchor came up with a rattle that drowned the slow crash and mumble of the surf, furled sails blossomed white in the moonlight, and smoke and sparks lit the blue of the night as the paddles threshed and turned.
    The schooner had seen them, but too late. She was too nearly free of the channel to check or turn, and there was nothing for it but to crowd on sail and go forward; and winning clear of the shoals she came about and fled before the strengthening wind, heeling to larboard with the long wake of foam streaming out behind her like a shimmering path across the dancing sea.
    Colours broke from her masthead and fluttered in the breeze, but by the light of the half moon it was difficult to make out what they were, until a midshipman staring through a telescope announced: “American, sir. She’s hoisted the stars-and-stripes.”
    “Has she, by God,” snarled the Lieutenant. “That trick may work with the West Coast Squadron, but it won’t with me. There’s nothing American about that bastard except his blasted impertinence. Put a shot across him. Bates.”
    “Ay, ay, sir.”
    There was a flash and a boom, and the shot passed over the schooner’s masthead and plunged into the sea beyond.
    “They’re lightening ship, sir.”
    The fleeing shape ahead of them was flinging everything movable overboard. Spars, casks and timber flashed briefly in the moonlight and bobbed away in the creaming wake, and as the breeze freshened the tiny dark figures of her crew could be seen throwing water on her straining canvas and scrambling from one side to the other to trim the ship.
    Even in those light airs she was faster than Lieutenant Larrimore had thought possible, and it was obvious that she was being handled in a masterly manner. He began to realize that even with the advantage of steam in his favour she might draw away from him if the breeze continued to strengthen, for he could not keep up the chase for long—the Admiralty being notoriously parsimonious in the matter of fuel, his supply of coal was far from adequate.
    “Come on! come on, blast you!” muttered the Lieutenant, apparently urging the threshing paddles to greater speed: “We can’t let that chousing scug get away from us this time. God damn