It was morning when Hadow raised the island, a fleecy speck of cloud against the sky line, and he shortened sail at once and lingered out the day so as to bring him up to it by dark. After supper every light on board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth water, merged her steep sides and towering yards and canvas into the universal shadow. With whispering keel and a wind so fair and soft that one wondered to see the sails stiffen in the bolt ropes, the man-of-war stole steadily to leeward, with no sound but the occasional creak of cordage, or the hoarse murmur of voices from the lower deck. Hadow himself, pacing the quarter-deck in his boat cloak, was lost in reverie, while the wardroom and the steerage in unredeemed darkness held nothing but dozing men.
By ten the ship was hove to close ashore, and the lights of the little settlement glimmered through the palms. The warm night, laden with exotic fragrance and strangely exciting in the intensity of its stillness and beauty, hid beneath its far-reaching pall the various actors of an extraordinary drama. With pistols buckled to their hips, Brady, Winterslea, Hotham, and Stanbury-Jones, four officers of the ship, together with Hatch, a flinty-faced old seaman who could be trusted, all slipped down the ladder into the captain's gig and pulled with muffled oars for the break in the reef. Picking their way through the pass, with the surf on either hand roaring in their ears, they slowly penetrated the lagoon and headed for the king's house. The shelving beach brought them to a stop, and all jumping out to lighten the boat, they drew her over the shingle and made her painter fast to a _pandanus_ tree. Then, acting in accordance with a preconcerted plan, Winterslea was sent forward to track down their prey, while the rest huddled together to await his return.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes passed in palpitating suspense. A girl drew by wreathed in flowers; she looked out to sea, then up at the stars, and shrank again into the shadow. From the neighboring houses there came the sound of mellow voices and of laughter. A pig rooted and rustled among a heap of cocoanut shells. Half an hour passed, and from far across the water, as faint and silvery as some elfin signal, the ship sent her message of the time: six bells.