"That's a summons!" said Wade, coming hurriedly back up the rocks; for he and Kit were a little ahead. "Put for the top of the ledges up here! We can see from there!"
We had got twenty yards, perhaps, when a second loud report made the rocks rattle to it.
"There's trouble!" exclaimed Wade at my heels, as we climbed up the steep side.
An undefinable fear had blanched all our faces. Scarcely had the echoes of the gun died out among the crags when another heavier report made the islet jar under our feet.
"Oh, there!" exclaimed Raed despairingly.
Donovan was a step ahead; but Kit and I sprang past him now. Another shelving incline of forty or fifty yards, and the blue sea burst into view over the rocks. My eyes burned in their sockets from the violent exertion. At first I saw only "The Curlew" with her great white sails both broadside to us, and our bright gay flag streaming out. A glance showed that she had been brought round, and that the sails were flapping wildly. A jet of flame streamed out from her side; and, like a warning-call, the sharp report crashed on our ears, infinitely louder now we had gained the top. All this in a second.
"Why! what is it?" I exclaimed. Turning, I saw them all staring off to the west.
Heavens! there, under full sail, was a large ship not two miles off! How like the shadow of doom she loomed up! and how suddenly white the faces of Kit and Wade just beyond me looked! We had thought we were on the lookout for this very thing; and yet it seemed to us now a complete surprise. We were stunned.
Bang! A heavy cannon; and the water flew up in a long white streak far past "The Curlew" as the big shot went driving by. The ship was within a mile and a half of her, and we here on the islet three-fourths of a mile away! Yet there stood "The Curlew" motionless on the waves; and there stood Capt. Mazard, waving his hat for us, his glass glittering in his other hand.
"To the boat!" yelled Weymouth, leaping down the rocks. "He wouldn't go without us!"