features that appeared, eleven days later, to break the line of sky,
were the arid mountains of Oahu.

It has often since been a comfortable thought to me that we had thus
destroyed the tell-tale remnants of the Flying Scud; and often a strange
one that my last sight and reminiscence of that fatal ship should be
a pillar of smoke on the horizon. To so many others besides myself
the same appearance had played a part in the various stages of that
business: luring some to what they little imagined, filling some with
unimaginable terrors. But ours was the last smoke raised in the story;
and with its dying away the secret of the Flying Scud became a private
property.

It was by the first light of dawn that we saw, close on board, the
metropolitan island of Hawaii. We held along the coast, as near as
we could venture, with a fresh breeze and under an unclouded heaven;
beholding, as we went, the arid mountain sides and scrubby cocoa-palms
of that somewhat melancholy archipelago. About four of the afternoon
we turned Waimanolo Point, the westerly headland of the great bight of
Honolulu; showed ourselves for twenty minutes in full view; and then
fell again to leeward, and put in the rest of daylight, plying under
shortened sail under the lee of Waimanolo.

A little after dark we beat once more about the point, and crept
cautiously toward the mouth of the Pearl Lochs, where Jim and I had
arranged I was to meet the smugglers. The night was happily obscure, the
water smooth. We showed, according to instructions, no light on deck:
only a red lantern dropped from either cathead to within a couple of
feet of the water. A lookout was stationed on the bowsprit end, another
in the crosstrees; and the whole ship's company crowded forward,