e little
vessel's movements by her tautly set-up rigging and the consequent
rigidity of her spars, that she was going little more than six. This
was anything but satisfactory; O'Flaherty's first action, therefore, was
to order a general easing-up of lanyards, fore and aft, aloft and alow;
and no sooner was this done than we felt the advantage of the change;
the swing and play of the spars being restored, and the rigging eased up
until they were merely _supported_ without their pliancy being
interfered with, the little craft at once recovered her elasticity, and
not only went along faster, but also took the seas much more buoyantly,
riding lightly over them instead of digging through them as before, so
that she no longer threw the spray over and over herself, but went along
as light and dry as an empty bottle. But it was still evident that her
top-hamper was too heavy; we therefore set the carpenter to work to
reduce a couple of spare topmasts we had on board, with the view to
shifting them upon the first favourable opportunity; and, this done, we
hoped to have the hooker once more at her best.

Nothing of importance occurred until we arrived off the Cristo Cays,
when--the time being about three bells in the forenoon watch, and the
larger island bearing about two miles on the larboard bow, a couple of
miles distant--O'Flaherty brought a chart on deck and, spreading it out
on the companion slide, beckoned me to him.

"Look here, Lascelles," said he, making a mark on the chart with his
pencil-point, "there is where we are, and that," pointing away over the
larboard bow, "is Cristo Cay. Now, whereabouts is the channel that you
saw that big felucca going into?"

"It is further on to the westward; you cannot see it from here. But why
do you ask?" I inquired.

"Because, me bhoy, I intind to take a look in there and see what there
is to be seen," he replied.

"If you will excuse my saying so, I think you had better not," said I.
"In my opinion it would be wiser to meddle with these other places as
little as possible until we have beaten up Merlani's quarters. From all
that we could learn from Carera his gang is far and away the most
formidable all along this coast; and it seems to me that it would be
only prudent on our part to create as little alarm as possible among
these fellows until we have polished him off. His snuggery is strong
enough and difficult enough of approach as it is, and it might be made
infinitel