If the course was altered at midnight, and shaped to one which would bring them close to Molokai, where the eventful dash and relief expedition would be carried out, who was to be the wiser?
The night, for which they had watched for nearly a week, was almost a calm—but overclouded, and dark as a wolf’s throat. The proverbial hand, when held before the face, was invisible.
The _Leonora_, miles away at nightfall, had glided closer to the land and lay off and on. The dropping of an anchor near the forbidden shore would, of course, have aroused suspicion. The crew, with Bill Hicks at the steer oar, had been carefully chosen. The whale-boat, which, for reasons of his own, the Captain of the _Leonora_ always had on board, was reliable on any sea, and against any of the winds of heaven. The crew was composed of Rotumah islanders, perhaps the best men—except those of Norfolk Island—in rough water or wild gale that the South Pacific breeds. They may have had a general idea of the nature of the service in which they were engaged, but were merely told that they were to pull quietly to the beach near a rocky point, where a post stood in the sand, with a small lantern attached to it. There they would see a man, wrapped in a cloak. As soon as the boat grounded, he would walk towards them. They were to run to meet him, lifting him carefully into the boat, as he had been ill. Then to pull their d—dest. Bill Hicks would see to that; and the quicker they got back to the brig the surer they would be of a tot of rum all round, and a pound of tobacco. But, if they valued their skins, they were not to come back without their passenger. It is not improbable that they were aware of the object and circumstances of the secret service. But—
Their’s not to make reply, Their’s but to do and die.
The crew of the _Leonora_ had, before now, been in affairs where certain shipmates had lost the ‘number of their mess.’ Such experience was nothing new to them. ‘It was all in the day’s work’—one man came back safe and sound, the other ‘went to Davy Jones.’
Nothing could have been more propitious: the silent, moonless night; the sleeping ocean, dark, waveless—unillumined save by the phosphorescence caused by a leaping fish—the sombre surface in Stygian repose. The _Leonora_ had approached the dread island long after dark, gradually getting closer by long ‘boards.’ For a while the low rhythmic murmur of the unresting surge was the only sound which broke the strange silence, almost oppressive in its completeness. Then, as the boat left the ship’s side noiselessly, and, rowed with muffled oars, approached the shallows of the beach, a weird confused lament, as of wails, moans, and cries of pain, rose through the murky air. Such was the outcome of periodical seizures, with torturing, lancinating pains, which, towards the later hours of the night, occur with dreadful regularity in advanced or hopeless cases. As they increased in distinctness one might have observed a movement as of shuddering fear among the crew, who peered eagerly through the gloom, beyond which lay the dim white beach, with a fringe of plumy palms beyond. Straining his eyes, the quartermaster in the bow observed dark forms wandering, as it appeared to him, along the seashore. Their gait was slow and faltering; with weak, tremulous steps they seemed as though doubtful of their ability to reach the point from which to survey the ocean—to look, if better was not to be had, upon the highway to freedom, and that outer world, from which they had been severed once and for ever. They might well have passed for a company of gibbering ghosts on the bank of that dark Lethean stream where earthly joys and sorrows cease.