he boat, and he looked at his brother
anxiously.

There was still time! Out to sea with her! The _Garbosa_ swung round a
little, heading Northeast, away from the Cape. The maneuver was all in
her favor, as she now got the wind fairly over the stern quarter, and
was eating into the sea like anything, taking every wave aboard over the
bow. The cutter was surely after them, for she too came about and
followed. A better and a lighter boat with more speed in her! But the
Rector saw that the distance between them was considerable. He had a
good start. He would run, run, run, damn it, clear to Marseilles if
necessary--provided, that is, the old band-box didn't sink, cargo, crew,
and all.

At noon the _Garbosa_ had held her own. By that time they must surely
have been as far up as Valencia. Suddenly the cutter changed her course,
and turned shoreward, abandoning the chase. The sly devils! The Rector
understood what they were up to. The weather had an ugly look. The
cutter preferred to loaf along the coast, sure that sooner or later the
_Garbosa_ would try to get back home and land her booty.

"We'll go them one better," the Rector exclaimed, drawing a deep breath
of relief. "We've got to find a place to crawl into, boys! We can't stay
another night at sea in a mess of a boat like this. Off for the
Columbretas! There's always a place there for an honest free-trader!"

At nine o'clock that night, taking her course from a lighthouse, and
groaning and cracking as she bucked into a nasty sea, the _Garbosa_ shot
into the Big Columbreta, an extinct volcanic crater, caved in, on one
side, leaving a half-circle of steep, wave-eaten cliffs, within which
the water is calm, unless the storm happens to be coming from the East.
This island, uninhabited save by the keepers of the lighthouse, has not
a trace of beach. The abrupt, precipitous walls of lava are too bare to
feed a tree, so hot is the sun in summer, so heavy is the air with salt.
At their base are piles of pebbles that the storm-surf has rolled on
high, with a mixture of flotsam and jetsam and dead fish. Scattered
around the larger islet lie the Little Columbretas,--the Foradada,
piercing the surface of the water like the arch of a submarine temple,
and a cluster of barren rocks, bald, sheer-faced, unapproachable, like
the fingers of some prehistoric colossus buried there in the depths.

The _Garbosa_ came to anchor in the pool. No one seemed to notice her
presence. The light