Sailor had watched his master getting his guns ready for some days, and, doubtless, memories stirred in him of Scotch moors they had shot over together.  He raised his head to the night wind, and sniffed impatiently, as though he already scented the wild duck on Andros Island.  He was impatient, like the rest of us, because, though it was an hour past sailing-time, we had still to collect two of the crew.  The same old story!  I marvelled at the good humour with which Charlie—­who is really a sleeping volcano of berserker rage—­took it.  But he reminded me of his old advice as I started for my first trip:  “No use getting mad with niggers—­till you positively have to!”

Well, the two loiterers turned up at last, and, all preliminaries being at length disposed of, we threw off the mooring ropes, and presently there was heard that most exhilarating of sounds, to any one who loves sea-faring, the rippling of the ropes through the blocks as our mainsail began to rise up high against the moon which was beginning to look out over the huge block of the Colonial Hotel, the sea-wall of which ran along as far as our mooring.  A few lights in its windows here and there broke the blank darkness of its facade, glimmering through the avenues of royal palms.  I am thus explicit because of something that presently happened, and which stayed the mainsail in its rippling ascent.

A tall figure was running along the sea-wall from the direction of the hotel, calling out, a little breathlessly, in a rich young voice as it ran: 

“Wait a minute there, you fellows!  Wait a minute!”

We were already moving, parallel with the wall, and at least twelve feet away from it, by the time the figure—­that of a tall boy, cow-boy hatted, and picturesquely outlined in the half light—­stopped just ahead of us.  “Like the herald Mercury,” I said to myself.  He raised something that looked like a bag in his right hand, calling out “catch” as he did so; and, a moment after, before a word could be spoken, he took a flying leap and landed amongst us, plump in the cock-pit, and was clutching first one of us and then the other, to keep his balance.

“Did it, by Jove!” he exclaimed in a beautiful English accent, and then started laughing as only absurd dare-devil youngsters can.

“Forgive me!” he said, as soon as he could get his breath, “but I had to do it.  Heaven knows what the old man will say!”

He seemed to take it all for granted in a delightful, nonchalant way, so that the angry protest which had already started from Charlie’s lips stopped in the middle.  That fearless leap had taken his heart.

“You’re something of a long jump!” said Charlie.

“O!  I have done my twenty-two and an eighth on a broad running jump, but I had no chance for a run there,” answered the lad, carelessly.

“But suppose you’d hit the water instead of the deck?”

“What of it?  Can’t one swim?”