Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/132

 and was rowed ashore, while Humphrey, with a sigh of relief, turned himself to the preparations for getting under way. He had vowed a vow within himself that Jonathan Adams should not be disappointed and that, on the homeward voyage, they would shorten the passage by the five days for which he had hoped.

It was at daylight next morning, when the West Wind had cleared the harbor of Tripoli and, leaving behind the palm-clad shore with its minarets and towers and its evil, hostile city, was standing out to sea, that Captain Reynolds sat down in his cabin to examine the log book which he had sent for, to make certain that wind and weather and the exact hour of weighing anchor had been correctly noted. He smiled as he glanced at the entry of the day before with its record of the visit of state.

"And he had the impudence, even, to curse me," he reflected, chuckling, "as though any one could hide on my ship without my knowing—"

He stopped abruptly, the page half-turned in his hand. For a strange sound was developing in the locker opposite his bunk, a scratching as though a rat were shut in behind the door, then the clicking of the latch as, out from the narrow space where no one would think a grown man could hide, came tumbling the Chinaman, half-smothered, but clutching unharmed his heart's treasure in its porcelain pot.