Wade turned away; and for many minutes we were all silent.
Bang!
"Come, fellows!" Raed exclaimed at length. "This won't do! Wade has got the gloomiest side out! Come, rally from this! See, they're not gaining on the schooner! Look how she's bowling away! They haven't hit her yet. Kit! Wash! I say, fellows, it looks a little bad, I own. But never say die; or, if you must die,—why, die game. That's the doctrine you are always preaching, Kit. Isn't it, now? Tell me!"
"But to be frozen or starved to death among these desolate ledges!" muttered Kit.
"Is not a cheery prospect, I'll admit," Raed finished for him. "Rather trying to a fellow's philosophy, isn't it?"
Bang!
"She isn't hit yet," remarked Donovan, who had taken Raed's glass. "She slides on gay as a cricket. I can see the cap'n throwing water with the skeet against the sails to make 'em draw better."
"How, for Heaven's sake, did that ship come to get up so near before they saw her?" Kit exclaimed suddenly.
We looked off to the west. The dozen straggling islets beyond us extended off in irregular order toward the north-west.
"I think," said Raed, "that the ship must have come up a little to the south of those outer islands. Our folks could not have seen her, then, till she came past."