ld chaps talked
of Mexican privateers, which seemed to rendezvous off that place.
They pointed out to me the headland near the bay. There was no sign of
privateer or pirate, as far as the eye could reach. In the course of
beating up to windward we closed in with the coast, and then the wind
fell.

I remained motionless against the rail for half the night, looking at
the land. Not a single light was visible. A wistful, dreamy longing, a
quiet longing pervaded me, as though I had been drugged. I dreamed, as
young men dream, of a girl's face. She was sleeping there within this
dim vision of land. Perhaps this was as near as I should ever be able to
approach her. I felt a sorrow without much suffering. A great stillness
reigned around the ship, over the whole earth. At last I went below and
fell asleep.

I was awakened by the idea that I had heard an extraordinary
row--shouting and stamping. But there was a dead silence, to which I
was listening with all my ears. Suddenly there was a little pop, as if
someone had spat rather vigorously; then a succession of shouts, then
another little pop, and more shouts, and the stamping overhead. A woman
began to shriek on the other side of the bulkhead, then another woman
somewhere else, then the little girl. I hurried on deck, but it was some
minutes before I could make things fit together. I saw Major Cowper on
the poop; he was brandishing a little pistol and apostrophizing Lumsden,
who was waving ineffectual arms towards the sky; and there was a
great deal of shouting, forward and overhead. Cowper rushed at me, and
explained that something was an abominable scandal, and that there were
women on board. He waved his pistol towards the side; I noticed that the
butt was inlaid with mother-of-pearl Lumsden rushed at him and clawed at
his clothes, imploring him not to be rash.

We were so close in with the coast that the surf along the shore gleamed
and sparkled in full view.

Someone shouted aloft, "Look out! They are firing again."

Then only I noticed, a quarter of a mile astern and between the land and
us, a little schooner, rather low in the water, curtseying under a cloud
of white canvas--a wonderful thing to look at. It was as if I had never
seen anything so instinct with life and the joy of it. A snowy streak
spattered away from her bows at each plunge. She came at a great speed,
and a row of faces looking our way became plain, like a beady decoration
above her bulwarks. She