like pink Carrara marble and then was blown swiftly away on the wind.
The crewmen froze in the rigging, petrified by the howling passage of
the shot, and then suddenly they were galvanized into frantic babbling
activity and the gleaming white canvas disappeared as swiftly as a wild
goose furls its wings when it settles on the lake surface.
Jake looked back at the destroyer and searched for seconds before he
found her. He wondered what they would make of the disappearance of
the sails. They might believe the Hirondelle had obeyed the order to
heave to, not guessing that she was under propeller power as well.
Certainly she would have disappeared from their view, her low dark hull
no longer beaconed by the towering white pyramid of canvas. He waited
impatiently for the last few minutes until the warship itself was no
longer visible from the masthead before bellowing down to the Greek the
orders that sent Hirondelle swinging away into the wind and pounding
back into the head sea along her original track, side-stepping the
headlong charge of the destroyer.
Jake held that course while the tropical night fell over the Gulf like
a warm thick blanket, pricked only by the cold white stars. He
strained his eyes into the impenetrable blackness, chilled by 'the fear
that the destroyer Captain might have double-guessed him and
anticipated his turn. At any moment, he expected to see the towering
steel hull emerge at close range from the night and flood the schooner
with the brilliant white beams of her battle lights and hear the
squawking peremptory challenge of her bull horn.
Then suddenly, with a violent lift of relief, he saw the cold white
fingers of the lights far behind at least six miles away at the spot
where the destroyer had seen him taking in sail. The Captain had
bought the dummy, believing that Hirondelle had heaved to and waited
for him to come up.
Jake threw back his head and laughed with relief before he caught
himself and began shouting new orders down to the deck, swinging the
schooner once again across the wind on the reciprocal of the warship's
course, and beginning the long delicate contest of skill in which the
Hirondelle ducked and weaved on to her old course, while the warship
plunged blindly back and forth across the darkened Gulf, searching
desperately with the mile-long beams of the battle lights for the dark
and stinking hull of the slaver or switching them off and running under
full power with all her ports darkened in the hope of taking
HirondeUe unawares.
Once the destroyer Captain almost succeeded, but Jake caught the
flashing phosphorescence of her bow-wave a mile off. Desperately he
yelled at the Greek to heave to and they lay silent and unseen while
the low greyhound-wasted warship slid swiftly across their bows, her
engines beating like a gigantic pulse, and was swallowed once again by
the night. The nervous sweat that bathed Jake's shirt dried icy cold
in the night wind as he put HirondeUe cautiously on course again.
Two hours later he saw the lights of the destroyer again, a glow of
white light far astern, that pulsed like summer sheet lightning as the
arc lamps traversed back and forth.
