"Looks that way," Thad told him.
"But that don't seem so far on the map; you, just put your finger on the same, Thad; and if she's close enough to do that, hadn't we ought to see that island, ahead somewhere?"
"Suppose you take the glasses and look," suggested the pilot, who was busy with the engine that had stopped short again, and needed coaxing to take up its burden once more, "It's rather hazy, you'll notice, so that you couldn't be sure of anything more than three miles away, I reckon; but tell us what lies de ahead, will you, Bumpus?"
A minute later, and the fat scout cried out in considerable excitement:
"I can see land ahead, sure I can, fellows!"
"That must be the island, then," rejoined Thad, busily engaged.
"Our only hope, so we had ought to call it our island," Davy went on to say, as he deliberately took the glasses from Bumpus, and glued the smaller end of the same to his own eyes.
Then in turn everybody but Thad had to have a chance to look; and in the end it was the consensus of opinion that Bumpus had spoken only the truth when he said there were positive evidences of some sort of land ahead.
"Oh! if you could only get that old junk-shop engine to working for half an hour, Thad, we'd have plenty of time to circle around to the leeward side of that island, and then we could get ashore, no matter what happened to the Belle," Bumpus faltered, as he watched the skipper still working as rapidly as he could.
All at once the machinery started up again, when Thad gave the crank a whirl.