All the boys now scrambled out, glad enough to set foot on shore. But they found their surroundings cheerless rather. The soft blanket of the fog shut in, white and fleecy, all about them. Now and again they heard a wandering sea-bird call, but they could see neither the sea nor any part of the shore beyond the rock wall near at hand. They no longer heard the whistle of the Nora lying at anchor at the mouth of the channel.
Both the natives now pulled out pipes and began to smoke silently. One produced from his pocket an object deeply wrapped in a bundle of rags and hide, which finally proved to be an old brass watch, which he consulted anxiously.
“Him sleep,” he remarked, shaking the watch and putting it to his ear. By this Rob knew that he meant that the watch had stopped.
“I knew he could talk,” said John. “Ask him where we can get something to eat. I’m getting awful hungry.”
“You’re always hungry, John,” said Rob. “The most important thing for us is to find where we are. Here, you!” He addressed the natives. “You can talk English. Which way is town? How far? Why don’t we get there at once?”
The wrinkled native smiled amiably again, and remarked “By-’n-by”; but that seemed to be the extent of his English, for after that he only shook his head and smiled.
“This is a fine thing, isn’t it?” said Rob. “I wonder what your uncle Dick will think of us. Anyway, we’ve got our guns and blankets, and there’s a box of crackers and some canned tomatoes under the boat seat.”
At last the two natives began to jabber together excitedly. They turned and said something to the boys which the latter could not understand, and then, without further ado, made off inland and disappeared in the fog. Some moments elapsed before the boys understood what had happened, and indeed they had no means of knowing the truth, which was that the two natives, who were perfectly friendly, had started across to the Mission House of Wood Island, some two miles or more, in search of something to eat, and possibly in the wish of getting further instructions about these young men they found in their charge.
“Why don’t they come back?” asked Jesse, in the course of half an hour or so, during which all were growing more anxious than they cared to admit.