Chapter 5

MUSIC IN THE MOONLIGHT

Several days passed and from the standpoint of the schooner the voyage was successful. The wind continued fresh and strong, and it came out of the right quarter. The days were clear, the sea was a dazzling color, shifting as the sky over it shifted. The slaver was in high good humor. His crew seemed to be under perfect control and went about their work mostly in silence. They rarely sang, as sailors sing, but Robert, watching them on spar or mast, although he knew little about ships, knew that they were good sailors. He realized, too, that the crew was very large for a vessel of its size, and he believed that he understood the reason.

As for himself, he felt a vast loneliness. It was incredible, but he was there on the schooner far from all he had known. The forest, in which he had lived and the war that had concerned the whole world had sunk out of sight beyond the horizon. And on the schooner he had made no acquaintance save the slaver. He knew that the mate was called Carlos, but he had not yet spoken to him. He tried his best to be cheerful, but there were times when despair assailed him in spite of all his courage and natural buoyancy.

"Better reconsider," said the slaver one day, catching the look upon his face. "As I've told you, Peter, the life on the plantations is hard and they don't last long, no matter how strong they are. There's peril in the life I lead, I'll admit, but at least there's freedom also. Sport's to be found among the islands, and along the Spanish Main."

"I couldn't think of it," said Robert.

"Well, it's the second time I've made you the offer, and the last. I perceive you're bent on a life in the sugar cane, and you'll have your wish."

Robert, seeing no chance of escape from the ship now, began to hope for rescue from without. It was a time of war and all vessels were more than commonly wary, but one might come at last, and, in some way he would give a signal for help. How he did not know, but the character of the schooner was more than doubtful, and he might be able, in some way, yet unsuggested, to say so to any new ship that came.

But the surface of the sea, so far as their own particular circle of it was concerned, was untroubled by any keel save their own. It was as lone and desolate as if they were the first vessel to come there. They fell into a calm and the schooner rocked in low swells but made no progress. The sun shone down, brassy and hot, and Robert, standing upon the deck, looked at the sails flapping idly above. Although it carried him farther and farther away from all for which he cared, he wished that the wind would rise. Nothing was more tedious than to hang there upon the surface of the languid ocean. The slaver read his face.

"You want us to go on," he said, "and so do I. For once we are in agreement. I'd like to make a port that I