Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/198

They saw a boat coming a long way off, with her men rowing furiously, but by that time there were all manner of sounds on the shore whence the boat had launched forth. Shouts and yells in English and Spanish, with ever the booming of guns, echoed across the harbour. Beacons flamed up and for a while danced fitfully, only to die away when those who tended the fires left them unwatched and with flaming brands joined in the cry; and in the wake of the furiously rowing boat came others that strove with a great thresh of oars to overhaul the fugitive.

The activity and tumult were very small and faint under the bright stars in that harbour girdled about with palms. Though the rugged slopes of wild mountains, rising like escarpments above the harbour, by day completely dwarfed it, yet the stars made the mountains seem by night mere pigmy hills, and even the many sounds, which a great echoing redoubled, seemed smaller and fainter in the presence of the vast spaces that such a night suggests.

Although the men in the foremost boat rowed out of time and clumsily, their fierce efforts kept them their lead, and they were still far in advance of their pursuers when they tossed up their oars and crouched panting on the thwarts in the shadow of the ship.

"Ropes, you fools!” the Old One called. "Cast us