Chapter 4

THE SCHOONER EBBA.

It was not till the next morning, and then very leisurely, that
the _Ebba_ began to make preparations for her departure. From the
extremity of New-Berne quay the crew might have been seen holystoning
the deck, after which they loosened the reef lines, under the
direction of Effrondat, the boatswain, hoisted in the boats and
cleared the halyards.

At eight o'clock the Count d'Artigas had not yet appeared on deck.
His companion, Serko the engineer, as he was called on board, had not
quitted his cabin. Captain Spade was strolling quietly about giving
orders.

The _Ebba_ would have made a splendid racing yacht, though she had
never participated in any of the yacht races either on the North
American or British coasts. The height of her masts, the extent of
the canvas she carried, her shapely, raking hull, denoted her to be a
craft of great speed, and her general lines showed that she was also
built to weather the roughest gales at sea. In a favorable wind she
would probably make twelve knots an hour.

Notwithstanding these advantages, however, she must in a dead calm
necessarily suffer from the same disadvantages as other sailing
vessels, and it might have been supposed that the Count d'Artigas
would have preferred a steam-yacht with which he could have gone
anywhere, at any time, in any weather. But apparently he was satisfied
to stick to the old method, even when he made his long trips across
the Atlantic.

On this particular morning the wind was blowing gently from the west,
which was very favorable to the _Ebba_, and would enable her to stand
straight out of the Neuse, across Pamlico Sound, and through one of
the inlets that led to the open sea.

At ten o'clock the _Ebba_ was still rocking lazily at anchor, her stem
up stream and her cable tautened by the rapidly ebbing tide. The small
buoy that on the previous evening had been moored near the schooner
was no longer to be seen, and had doubtless been hoisted in.

Suddenly a gun boomed out and a slight wreath of white smoke arose
from the battery. It was answered by other reports from the guns on
the chain of islands along the coast.

At this moment the Count d'Artigas and Engineer Serko appeared on
deck. Captain Spade went to meet them.

"Guns barking," he said laconically.

"We expected it," replied Serko, shrugging his shoulders. "They are
signals to close the passes."

"What has that to do with us?" asked the Count d'Artigas quietly.

"Nothing at all," said the engineer.

They all, of course, knew that the alarm-guns indicated that the
disappearance of Thomas Roch and the warder Gaydon from Healthful
House