“Yes, sir, in the next bay; there's a creek we can easily run into.”
“You are quite sure he couldn't have been blown out to sea?”
“How could he, sir? There's only one way the wind could dhrive him. If he isn't in the Clough Bay, he's in glory.”
All the anxiety of that dreary night was nothing to what Harcourt now suffered, in his eagerness to round the Rooks' Point, and look in the bay beyond it. Controlling it as he would, still would it break out in words of impatience and even anger.
“Don't curse the boat, yer honor,” said Peter, respectfully, but calmly; “she's behaved well to us this night, or we 'd not be here now.”
“But are we to beat about here forever?” asked the other, angrily.
“She's doin' well, and we ought to be thankful,” said the man; and his tone, even more than his words, served to reprove the other's impatience. “I'll try and set the mainsail on her with the remains of the sprit.”
Harcourt watched him, as he labored away to repair the damaged rigging; but though he looked at him, his thoughts were far away with poor Glencore upon his sick bed, in sorrow and in suffering, and perhaps soon to hear that he was childless. From these he went on to other thoughts. What could have occurred to have driven the boy to such an act of desperation? Harcourt invented a hundred imaginary causes, to reject them as rapidly again. The affection the boy bore to his father seemed the strongest principle of his nature. There appeared to be no event possible in which that feeling would not sway and control him. As he thus ruminated, he was aroused by the sudden cry of the boatman.
“There's a boat, sir, dismasted, ahead of us, and drifting out to say.”
“I see her!—I see her!” cried Harcourt; “out with the oars, and let's pull for her.”