They had drifted a little out to sea, and Mitsos tacked back again to within three hundred yards of the ship, and finding shallow water, cast anchor. Two long hours went by, but neither spoke; only the freshening wind whistled in the rigging, the clouds promised a stormy night, and on board the Turkish ship they made ready to go to sea. A row of open port-holes showed a necklace of light, each light waking a column of reflection from the waters of the bay. Then a lantern was hoisted up onto the foremast, and another run out in the bows. Presently after came the grating sound of the anchor being pulled home, and a small sail was set, sufficient in this wind to take her slowly out of the harbor. Now a light in the town was hidden behind her bows, and another sprang up from behind the stern; she moved along the quay stately and slow, and, clear of the buoy at the end, she put up another sail.
Mitsos watched her intently, and then, without a word, he pulled up the anchor and ran up the sail, and silently they went in pursuit. But their light boat went too fast with its sail full spread, and when they had approached again to within two or three hundred yards he took in a couple of reefs, which equalized their speed, or, if anything, allowed the other to gain on them a little. And so they followed in the wake of the great condemned ship out past the harbor lights, round the end of the peninsula beyond the town, and into the black, foam-flecked gulf outside. The lights grew small and far away, the land faded to a dark shadow, which brooded on the horizon, and the two crafts, one with its immense cargo of human creatures, the other with a couple of beardless Greek lads--but with how strange a burden of anguish and destruction!--were shut off from all sound and sight except the threats of rising waves.
Then Mitsos rose, and pointing to the cans of turpentine:
"Empty one on the brushwood in the bows," he said to Yanni, "and give me another."
He climbed up the mast, and, resting the tin on the yard, took out the cork and let the contents dribble down over the sail. When the can was empty he came quickly down again and flushed the whole deck with another tinful, while Yanni poured the fourth onto the remainder of the fuel.