"On board with you!" called out Sam Prentice. "The anchor's comin' in. There's no time to be wasted."
Other orders followed, and Guert sprang away to his duties feeling a good deal more like himself than if he were watching slaves in a tobacco-field.
Very secure indeed had been that bit of a landlocked harbor on the island coast. Its entrance was a mere narrow canal, so to call it, between dangerous reefs on either side. No deep-draft British vessel could pass through that channel; even the _Noank_ was compelled to take it at high water because of its bars.
"Captain Avery," asked Guert, after delivering the messages of good will from his Spanish friends, "didn't you say that the British might have come in and carried the schooner in boats?"
"Ye-es, I did," drawled the captain. "That's the reason why I anchored her jest in that spot. I kept a sharp lookout, you see, on that there p'int o' rocks yonder. Our guns were kept trained on this channel, all the time. We were all prepared then to knock their boats to flinders as they got in to about here. Not one of 'em'd ever pulled past this 'ere twist in the channel, when it opens into the lagoon."
Guert's question was answered, and he had a higher idea than ever of the remarkable fitness of Lyme Avery to conduct the business of the privateer _Noank_.
"I see it," he thought. "They'd ha' been smashed by a raking fire at short range. It would ha' been awful!"
The schooner had but little canvas spread as yet, and she picked her way carefully, slowly; but the channel was not a long one, after all.
"Out at sea!" exclaimed Guert, with a long breath of relief, at last. "Seems to me as if I'd been on shore a year. I was getting pretty sick of it."
"Lyme Avery," remarked his mate, as more sails were spreading, "it looks to me as if we were goin' to have a rough night. We'd better git well away from the coast."
"We'll do that," replied the captain, "and we'll run along in the track o' that Liverpool trader. She has pretty nigh a day the start of us."
"I understand that," thought Guert, overhearing them. "We're in for a race. We may be chased ourselves, too. It doesn't look to me as if a storm's coming, but they read weather signs better'n I can."