It was on a Thursday afternoon that Mubara appeared at last, clear in the light of the setting sun and standing out sharply against the far background of mountains in Arabia. Jack at once hauled his wind to pass unseen and very carefully shaped his course for the passage between the smaller islands and reefs to the south. They were now in a region of trustworthy charts, and with the help of two excellent seamarks he and McElwee set the Niobe half way down the channel, dropping anchor in thirty-five fathom water.
There was still a possibility that the galley might not have passed. It was a very slight possibility, since the usual northerly winds had either not blown at all or had breathed so faintly that they would not have held her back; yet still a certain more or less theoretical hope subsisted, particularly in those bosoms that most desired it, and well before dawn Captain Aubrey, all his officers except the surgeon and the chaplain, and most of the watch below were on deck. It was a misty end to the night, and a slightly fresher west-north-west breeze blew a scud of warm vapours and exhalations over the waning moon; but she still shed a general, diffused light, and the larger stars showed through as orange blurs.
The Niobe swung to her anchor, the leeward tide running with a continuous gentle ripple; if the people spoke at all it was in an undertone. The eastern sky grew perceptibly lighter. Jack had been looking at Canopus, an indistinct glow in the south, and thinking about his son: would a boy brought up by his mother, with only sisters to play with, grow up a milksop? He had known smaller boys than George go to sea. Perhaps the clever thing to do was to take him for a four seasons' voyage and then put him to school for a year or two before returning to the Navy, so that he should not be as illiterate as most sea-officers, including his father. Some friend would certainly keep George's name on his ship's books, so the schooling would not mean trie loss of any time before he could pass for lieutenant. Two bells. At the sound he glanced forward; and when he looked back again the star was gone.
The head-pump started wheezing, and in this uncomfortable hour when the peace of night was dead and the true life of day had not yet returned the starboard watch began cleaning ship. The tide of water and sand had reached the waist and the holystones were grinding away on the forecastle when the rim of the sun showed red on the horizon. Calamy, sitting on the capstan with his trousers rolled up to keep them from the wet, suddenly leapt down and splashed over the deck to Mowett, who cried 'Forward there, belay,' and strode across to Jack. 'Sir,' he said, plucking off his hat, Calamy thinks he hears something.'
'Silence fore and aft,' called Jack. All hands froze where they stood, as in a children's game, often in ludicrous attitudes, a holystone or a swab upraised, and an expression of the most intense listening on their faces; and from far over to leeward all hands heard a remote chant Ayo-huh hah, ayo-huh hah that came in snatches against the breeze.
'Stand by to slip,' said Jack. 'Pass the word for Mr Hassan and the serang.'
But Hassan and the serang were already there, and both, as he turned to them, nodded emphatically, making the motion of pulling an oar: it was indeed the galley-rowers' song.
Where it came from they could not tell, though all but the hands preparing to slip the cable were listening with extreme attention: somewhere in the dimness to leeward was all they could make out. The sun rose and rose, .grew blinding, heaved its whole disc clear of the horizon; but still the drifting white scud veiled the surface of the sea. Jack leant far out over the rail, trying to pierce the mist; his mouth was open and he could hear his own heart beating, a hoarse panting sound, quite loud. Two voices from aloft. One screeched 'There she lays!' from the fore jackcrosstrees: the other, in the maintop, hailed 'On deck there. Galley just abaft the starboard beam.'
'Mr Mowett,' said Jack, 'slip the cable with a really good buoy to it, and let us make sail handsomely. Topsails and courses quite leisurely, as though we were a Company's ship making for Mubara in the ordinary course of events, having lain to in the night to get our bearings. Not many men are to go aloft - the watch below to go below, and most of the others to keep out of the way. We will not pipe up hammocks.'
He went below for his telescope and another glance at the chart he knew so well, and when he returned the cable was already gliding out of the hawse-hole as the Niobe swung from the wind under her backed foretopsail. Her main and mizen topsails were being hoisted in a deliberate, stolid fashion, and a few hands were standing ready to lay out on the lower yards.
'Where away?' asked Jack.
'Two points on the starboard bow, sir,' said Mowett.
In these few moments the sun had burnt off the vapours of the night and there she was, a good deal farther off and farther ahead than he had expected from the sound, but as plain as heart could desire. She was right over on the far side of the channel, on the very edge of the white-fringed coral reef that ran five or six miles north-west to the islet of Hatiba, which marked the entrance of the long, narrow Mubara bay, with the town at the bottom of it. She was heading for the island, pulling close to the wind, and in spite of all their care in avoiding the appearance of haste, of chase, of hostility, it looked as though she was alarmed: the rowers had stopped singing and they were pulling pretty hard.
Two questions instantly arose: could the Niobe weather the islet Hatiba, and if not could she cut the galley off before that point? Neither answer was clear. Each depended not only on their relative speeds and sailing qualities but on the varying forces of the breeze, the current, and the changing tide: in any case it would be a near-run thing. McElwee and the serang were familiar with the ship; they knew how she sailed on a bowline; but their faces were full of doubt.
Jack stepped over to the wheel. 'Full. Keep her full, Thompson,' he said to the helmsman, and then, as the way increased on the ship with the last sails set and drawing, 'Luff and touch her.' She came up, nearer and nearer the wind, and when the weather-leeches began to shiver in spite of the taut bowlines, he took the spokes, let her pay off until he felt her happy, said 'Dyce and no higher; very well dyce,' and walked back to the rail. He must make up his mind quickly, and while he was doing so this course would compromise neither of the possible solutions.
He stared at her. A long, low vessel, dead black like a Venetian gondola, much the same black as the southern side of Mubara beyond the reef, a totally sterile uninhabited desolation of craggy volcanic rock: perhaps a hundred and twenty feet from stem to stern: she had the curious forward-raked masts of the Red Sea galley, with a green swallow-tailed pennant streaming from the main, and two long curved lateen yards, their sails tight-furled. Each mast had a kind of basket-top or crow's-nest abaft the head, and in each there was a figure turned towards the Niobe, one with a telescope. Just how frightened was she? They were pulling hard, to be sure, but by the arched cabin right aft, which presumably sheltered the French officers, he saw no European faces, only a person in baggy crimson trousers who walked up and down, fanning himself. And how fast was she going? It was difficult to tell, but probably not much above five knots.
'So that is a galley,' said Martin, with great satisfaction: he and Stephen were standing at the fife-rails, sharing an indifferent spy-glass. 'And if I do not mistake, it has five and twenty oars of a side. That makes it the exact equivalent of the classical penteconter: Thucydides must have seen just such a boat. What joy!'