We raced up the ladder together—McShanus with an agility that must have spoken of his lost youth. It would have been then about ten o’clock at night—four bells of the first watch, as the seamen have it. The night was intensely dark and void of stars. A long gentle ground swell lifted the yacht lazily and rolled her as though she had been a cradle rocked by a loving hand. I perceived at once that our engines had been stopped and that we carried no lights. The African shore was hardly visible, but the thunder of distant surf said that we still hugged it. The crew themselves were all at the bows. I did not fail to notice that the machine guns were uncovered and the magazine hatch already removed. It really was wonderful how the good fellows acted in that moment of discovery. Had they been trained upon the decks of a British man-of-war, I could have looked neither for a warmer zeal nor a finer prudence. None spoke aloud or gave tongue to the excitement which possessed him. Quietly making way for me as I came up, the great boatswain, whom they called Balaam, pointed with his fat hand at the scene which engrossed their attention, and waited for my remarks. Others nodded their heads expressively. It was as though to say, “The master is right, after all.” I could have asked no greater compliment. And what did we see to hold us there engrossed? A low light flashing upon the water, perhaps the third of a mile from our own deck. Other lights from a steamer’s deck plainly answering the signal. A man needed to be no wizard to say that a boat had put out from some harbourage near by, and now exchanged signals with the steamer we had followed all day. But this was very far from being all, for as we stood there one of the ships suddenly turned a search-light upon the boat that came out to her, and we saw the whole picture, as in vivid radiance, cast upon the black screen of the night. There were two vessels, as we had surmised, and one of them had the shape and the manner of a foreign-built gunboat. The other seemed to be little more than a sea-going launch, speedy and snake-like, and carrying no more than three men. We could plainly see that a rope ladder had been slung out from the apparent gunboat, and that one of the hands from the launch meant to go aboard her. A great cloud of crimson smoke above the funnel of the larger vessel denoted her preparation for a speedy voyage and the brief aspect of her call. Indeed, to be precise, she did not lie-to more than fifteen minutes in all, and the man who had gone aboard her had already descended the ladder and had cast the launch off before she discovered our presence and knew that she was watched.