The White Blackbird

each, was keeping a perfunctory anchor-watch, staring idly seaward so that he saw nothing of a tiny light which flashed three times from the shore in belated response to a similar signal from a screened port in the poop-cabin. But for him, the decks were deserted. From the crew's quarters came frequent outbursts of ribald talk and uproarious laughter, the odour of food, the clank and clatter of tin-ware empty or full. The crew were at supper and satisfied for the present. From the companion-hatch on the poop four soundless shadows emerged. Two of them were carrying cautiously a long, flat fabric which they in a moment or two converted into a fourteen-foot canvas boat. These two lowered that overside. One of the others, a bundle in hand, slipped easily down into it by means of a rope made fast to a stanchion. The last, cursing under his breath, was helped over the rail, with one foot in a loop of the same line, by the two remaining on deck. Sallie, safely seated in the cockleshell below, laid a pairof muffled oars in the rowlocks and pushed quietly off from under the dripping overhang of the ship. Captain Dove, crouching in its stern, whispered curt directions to her. She could just see Reuben Yoxall and Jasper Slyne standing side by side at the steamer's taffrail, and then the black bulk of the Olive Branch became merged in the blacker water. Once out of earshot of the ship, she set to rowing in earnest, a strong, steady stroke, like one well accustomed...