The ship bore steadily toward them, but night was coming on so rapidly that her lines were obscured. They could not even tell whether it was a sailing vessel or propelled by steam.
"There's one thing certain," said Adam, excitedly: "it was coming this way, but very slowly. I suppose that is to be expected of a ship sailing unknown waters. They have nothing to go by, though they know, of course, just what part of the round globe they are on."
She answered almost apathetically, as if she found it difficult to talk, "It seems as if good sailors would lay by at night, when they do not know their course, and there is land in sight,—land that has never been explored."
"It does seem strange she should come right on," he assented. "For surely no ship has ever sailed these seas before. Perhaps—"
"Perhaps what?"
"Perhaps she has been clear around; perhaps this is the only bit of land left above a world ocean."
Robin shivered a little, and Adam turned toward the beacon, that had glowed in vain for a year. It had been built on a high, altar-shaped rock, across the gorge, where it could be kept up without leaving the park. Robin went with him, and they gathered a pile of timber that insured the brilliancy of their signal until morning. Adam piled on the logs till the blaze leaped far up in the darkness; then they went back to the boulder and sat down to think and wait.
"See how the wind is rising," said Robin, breaking a silence of an hour, during which even Lassie had been motionless.
"But it is toward land," answered Adam.
"But the same wind that brings us the ship may dash it to pieces on this awful coast."