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<h2>CHAPTER 22</h2> <div class="figleft"><ANTIMG src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="85" height-obs="75" /></div> he captain, turning quickly, bellowed for all hands to come on deck. When they were assembled below him he spoke. "Men, you have followed me for many a voyage and I have always brought you safely home. Is it not so?" A good-humored and enthusiastic roar of assent came from the sailors. Captain Blizzard began again. "What lies ahead of us in the next few hours will not make good sense to many of you. Nevertheless I ask for your instant help, and you shall see what lies at the end of my orders when we reach that time. Are you with me?" "AYE!" cried the sailors, their faces close together below their captain, and upturned to see him and catch every word. All but Zachary Heigh, Chris noticed. Zachary remained sullen and apart, his arms folded on his chest, taking no part in the enthusiasm of his companions. "Well and good," roared Captain Blizzard. "I thank you. Now crowd on all the sail she will take, boys, for the Venture follows hard upon us!" <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_162.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="572" alt="Illustration" /></div> Without a word the men sprang to work, darting up the masts and out over the rigging like monkeys. Every bit of sail the Mirabelle possessed bellied out on the night breeze, and Chris could feel the ship leap under his feet as the additional canvas caught the wind and the graceful ship surged forward. Night fell before the men had finished and Chris and the Captain could no longer see the sails of Claggett Chew's Venture. The Captain turned to Chris. "It would be my advice, lad, to go below and sleep for a bit. You too, Amos. I shall send Ned to awaken you when land is sighted." <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_163.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="563" alt="Illustration" /></div> This seemed good reasoning, and the two boys went below where they snatched a few hours' sleep. It seemed only a minute to Chris from the time he lay down in his hammock, knowing he was too excited to sleep, until Ned Cilley was at his side with a lantern, bringing food for Amos and himself. "Best eat up, lads," Ned told them, "and join the Captain, sez he to me, for land is just ahead and the Captain do be waiting you on the bridge, Chris, me lad." The food was bolted down in no time and Chris, feeling fresh and alert, ran up to the warm darkness of the bridge. To his surprise the usual lanterns were not lit; only a small shaded light shed its rays on the compass near the wheel. At his questioning look Captain Blizzard muttered: "Impossible to tell how close behind the Venture may be. We have come quickly, but they have the faster ship. I have no wish to give them more clue than necessary as to where we may be." He looked keenly toward the bow, his hands clasped behind his back. "Land is off the starboard quarter, and Abner Cloud is out on the bowsprit looking for the reef. We have passed our anchorage—they expected us, or some other ship, for fires were lit on shore. Sail has been taken in; we are going slowly and will soon be there, by my reckoning." His eyes grown used to the dark, Chris now saw that it was a remarkably light night. There was no moon, but a myriad of stars gave a clear pallid sheen to the sea. Chris, looking to his left, could make out the blacker mass against the stars that was Tahiti. The Mirabelle was close inshore, and the scent of hot sand from the beaches, of flowers and of plants, made Chris take many deep grateful breaths. "May I go forward and be with Abner?" he asked the Captain. "Aye," replied that good man, for by this time Chris was as surefooted as any sailor and for the last month or more had been clambering barefoot in the rigging with the best of them. "Aye lad," the Captain told him, "and hurry. Happen your eyes are sharper than Abner's. Sing out when you spy the reef. We will heave to, and then God be with you, my lad, to find us out the channel to the cove!" Chris ran forward to the bow of the Mirabelle, and out along the bowsprit where, at the tip, he could see the long form of Abner Cloud stretched out at full length. They murmured a greeting and waited, eyes straining ahead. Then both saw the phosphorus gleam and fade, gleam and fade as the waves broke over the coral. Eerie jade-green and white-gold, the phosphorus shone in the starlight. "Reef-ho!" sang out Abner, and the sound of his shout was echoed back from the closeness of the shore in faint dangerous mockery. "Reef-ho!" "Reef-ho!" came a third time from the bridge, and then "Heave-ho!" thundered Captain Blizzard. "Drop anchor, lads!" Abner left his place to go back and lend a hand, and in his sudden solitude Chris grasped a rope and swung down to the water. A porpoise slipped away from the Mirabelle and moved this way and that to get its bearings. Then the mass of the reef to the left and the hidden shelf of a second but obscured underwater reef to the right made dark patches in the phosphorescence. Far below lay the ghostly spread of sand, and the porpoise nosed its way forward. The channel to the cove proved to be some five hundred yards long, and it seemed no time before the porpoise passed from the shadow of the trees at the shore into the starlit cup of the cove. Taking a turn about in the enjoyment of flipping its fins and giving a leap or two, the big fish then went back toward where the Mirabelle hung suspended on the glassy sea. A boy it was that pulled himself up hand over hand along the anchor rope and stood dripping sea water on the bridge before Captain Blizzard. "I've found the channel, sir," he said, abruptly conscious of his importance from the admiring way in which Amos was staring at him. "There's a dangerous shelf of coral that juts out on the port side—if you let me go first, and the men man the boats and row her in, I think we shall do it safely even in this light." Captain Blizzard looked at him, his expression both serious and trusting. "Well lad, we do what we must, and you and I understand one another. Ahoy there!" he roared down to the shadowy decks from which the black spikes of masts rose high to break the sky. "Man the boats! We shall tow the Mirabelle to cover, for there's a channel here!" <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_166.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="182" alt="Illustration" /></div> He turned to Chris as the sound of running feet and of the boats being hoisted overboard came loudly in the stillness of the night. "Now Christopher, my boy, do you go down and go over the side again, and remember what we spoke of a few hours agone!" The next half-hour was an exhausting one for poor Chris. It was an impossibility for him to keep for long at a time, either his own, or the shape of the porpoise. He had to enter the water under the eyes of the sailors waiting with their oars poised above the sea, in the shape they knew; Christopher Mason. But once he dived under, in order to seek out the treacherous channel in the half-light, he needed his fish's eyes and senses. He therefore would swim a few yards as a fish, but had to surface again as himself in order to let the men see him, and call: "The length of two boats, keeping to starboard, boys. Then ease her over this way—to port." So it went, almost foot by foot until the Mirabelle was safe inside the cove and turned broadside to the entrance. Then, and only then, with the anchor safely dropped to the white sandy depths of this hidden harbor, did Chris, tired to his very bones, climb up the ladder and over the ship's side. There remained the camouflaging of the Mirabelle, for the stars were fading and before long, dawn would banish secrecy. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_167.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="190" alt="Illustration" /></div> But Captain Blizzard and Mr. Finney awaited Chris on deck. Captain Blizzard had his hands clasped behind his back in his habitual gesture, and as Chris stood before him swaying with fatigue, there was a look on the Captain's face that Chris had never seen there before. The usually cheerful, joking man was grave, while Mr. Finney, so sober and forlorn as a rule, looked positively jubilant. "My good lad," the Captain said, "you said you could do it, but truth to tell, I doubted it from the bottom of my heart. Now that you have succeeded where I am sure no other could have done as well, I find I have no words of praise good enough for ye." He looked almost tenderly at the tired boy. "I am proud of you, Christopher. You did a man's task with a boy's body and mind. And it took a man's spirit, too." Without further words the Captain of the Mirabelle held out his pudgy hand to hold Chris's in a steadying grip, and Mr. Finney swung out his hand, his long face breaking into one of the rare smiles Chris was ever to see on it. "Now, me boy," thundered the Captain, "do you go to your well-deserved rest. Depend upon it, we shall cover the ship with green until she looks like the proverbial Christmas hall decked with boughs of holly, as the song goes!" he added chuckling. "A little later in the day you shall be called to see what you make of the result. And now, to bed with ye both!" and he clapped Amos on the back. Never had his hammock seemed more like a cloud to Chris than it did on that night, nor was sleep ever more engulfing. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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