Explore "The Recipe for Diamonds" by Cutcliffe Hyne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Our preparations for that short sea trip were few and simple. Taltavull exchanged three small diamonds for cash, which enabled us to settle outstanding accounts; Haigh procured a basket of bread, hard-boiled eggs, and vermouth bottles; I made two or three chandlery purchases, and gave the rigging a bit of an overhaul. It was in the gloaming when we got the anchor, and night when we stood out between the dismantled old fort and the obsolete new one at the harbour's mouth, and got into open water.
Wind was fresh at first, and the ugly cutter's stem hissed through the water like red-hot iron; but as the moon rose into a steel-blue sky amongst bright white stars, the breeze dropped till it scarcely gave us steerage-way. Haigh sat smoking at the tiller throughout the night; Taltavull and I patrolled the narrow decks, chatting. We none of us felt inclined for sleep.