Murguia looked venomous, but the plank was drawn on board. CHAPTER V THE STORM CENTRE "God forbid I should be so bold as to press to heaven in my young days." --_Titus Andronicus._ The feathering buckets of the paddle wheels began to turn; and _La Luz_, long, low, narrow, and a racer, moved noiselessly out into the bay. A few yards only, and the loungers on the wharf could neither see nor hear her. Except for the muffled binnacle light, there was neither a ray nor a spark. The anthracite gave almost no smoke. The hull, hardly three feet above water amidships, was "Union color," and invisible at night. The waves slipped over her like oil, without the sound of a splash, almost without breaking. She glided along more and more swiftly. The silent engines betrayed no hint of their power, though breathing a force to drive a vessel five times as large. There were many entrances to the bay, and Murguia had had his steamer built of light draft especially, to profit by any outlet offering least danger from the vigilant patrol outside. The skipper had already chosen his course. Because of the gale, he calculated that the blockaders would get a considerable offing, lest they flounder mid the shoal waters inshore. He knew too, even if it were not so dark, that a long, foamy line of surf curtained the bay from any watchful eye on the open sea. By the time she reached the beach channels, _La Luz_ had full speed on. Then, knifing the higher and higher waves, she made a dash for it. For a slender steamer, and in such weather, the risk was desperate. The skipper hoped that the blockaders would never credit him with quite the insanity of it. He held the wheel himself, while beside him his keenest-sighted quartermaster stood guard with a glass. The agitated owner was there also, huddled in his black shawl, but the binoculars glued to his eyes trembled so that he could hardly have seen a full-rigged armada in broad daylight. Suddenly the quartermaster touched the skipper's arm under the shrouded binnacle. "I s'y sir," he whispered excitedly, "they're--_there!_ There, anchored at the inshore station, just off the bar! My eye, but hain't they beastly idiots? They'll smash to pieces." The skipper looked and Murguia tried to look. But they saw nothing. Except for the booming of the surf, they might have been on a landless sea, alone in the black night. Don Anastasio was shaking at such a rate that his two companions in the dark wheelhouse were conscious of it. He cursed the quartermaster for a pessimist. The skipper, though, was brave enough to believe. "We're expected, that's gospel," he muttered. But he did not change his course, for he knew that on his other side there was a second fleet, tugging at drift leads off the entrance to the main ship channel. It was near hopeless, but he meant to dart between the two.