During this time Barbara Harding had been kept below,
locked in a small, untidy cabin. She had seen no one other
than a great Negro who brought her meals to her three times
daily--meals that she returned scarcely touched.
Now the Halfmoon was brought up into the wind where
she lay with flapping canvas while Skipper Simms returned to
the Lotus with the six men of the yacht's crew that he had
brought aboard the brigantine with him two days before, and
as many more of his own men.
Once aboard the Lotus the men were put to work with
those already on the yacht. The boat's rudder was unshipped
and dropped into the ocean; her fires were put out; her
engines were attacked with sledges until they were little better
than so much junk, and to make the slender chances of
pursuit that remained to her entirely nil every ounce of coal
upon her was shoveled into the Pacific. Her extra masts and
spare sails followed the way of the coal and the rudder, so
that when Skipper Simms and First Officer Ward left her with
their own men that had been aboard her she was little better
than a drifting derelict.
From her cabin window Barbara Harding had witnessed
the wanton wrecking of her father's yacht, and when it was
over and the crew of the brigantine had returned to their own
ship she presently felt the movement of the vessel as it got
under way, and soon the Lotus dropped to the stern and
beyond the range of her tiny port.
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