Up and down the light bobbed out of sight for a second, then gleaming brightly as if the obscuring clouds had been brushed aside from the face of the star, which shone through the intervening gloom like a beacon to the wanderer.
"Yes, they are coming to us," added Rob, forgetting his lost friend in his excitement; "they will soon be here. I wonder they don't hail us."
"Don't be too sartin, lad," was the answer of the sailor; "if the boat was going straight from us it would seem for a time as though she was coming this way; I b'lieve she has changed her course without a thought of us."
They were cruel words, but, sad to say, they proved true. The time was not long in coming when all doubt was removed. The star dwindled to a smaller point than ever, seemed longer lost to view, until finally it was seen no more.
"Do you suppose they heard us?" asked Rob, when it was no longer possible to hope for relief from that source.
"Of course not; if they had they would have behaved like a Christian, and stood by and done what they could."
"Ships are not numerous in this latitude, and it may be a long time before we see another."
"The chances p'int that way, and yet you know there's a good many settlements along the Greenland coast. It isn't exactly the place I'd choose for a winter residence—especially back in the country—but there are plenty who like it."
"In what way can that affect us?"
"There are ships passing back and forth between Denmark and Greenland, and a number v'yage to the United States, and I'm hoping we may be run across by some of them—Hark!"