Flanagan and his Short Filibustering Adventure

One night the _Foundling_ was off the southern coast of Florida, and running at half-speed towards the shore. The captain was on the bridge. "Four flashes at intervals of one minute," he said to himself, gazing steadfastly towards the beach. Suddenly a yellow eye opened in the black face of the night, and looked at the _Foundling_ and closed again. The captain studied his watch and the shore. Three times more the eye opened and looked at the _Foundling_ and closed again. The captain called to the vague figures on the deck below him. "Answer it. " The flash of a light from the bow of the steamer displayed for a moment in golden colour the crests of the inriding waves.

The _Foundling_ lay to and waited. The long swells rolled her gracefully, and her two stub masts reaching into the darkness swung with the solemnity of batons timing a dirge. When the ship had left Boston she had been as encrusted with ice as a Dakota stage-driver's beard, but now the gentle wind of Florida softly swayed the lock on the forehead of the coatless Flanagan, and he lit a new cigar without troubling to make a shield of his hands.