Whether it was Champe’s intention to drown the officer, offhand, or merely to make a diversion out of which something might grow to our benefit, I never knew. But the diversion was a fact accomplished, beyond doubt. With lusty sailor shouts, the man with the boat-hook gave the alarm, and to the watch on deck was added the watch below, which came tumbling up at the cry of “Man overboard!” Naturally, with no lights, and with the fog thickening on every fresh breath of the sea wind, the men on the schooner did nothing but get in one another’s way; and the ensign who, like many another sailor, could swim no more than a stone, would have drowned a dozen times before they got their tender down from the davits at the stern.
But now I had my small inspiration, and with a quick word to Champe to secure his intelligent help, it was put into effect. It was a simple expedient, namely, to keep our boat within easy snatching distance of the drowning officer, and then to haul him aboard when he was too well soaked and frozen to remember his orders—all of which we did in the proper sequence, and with the desired result.
The pug-nosed little man was no longer red-faced when we passed him up the side of the schooner and into the hands of his excited crew, and no one said us nay when we sheered off silently into the fog afterward, and diligently lost ourselves once more.
That was no joke. We did lose ourselves beautifully this second time, and when, after what figured to us as two or three of the longest hours ever measured by falling sand grains, our boat took ground with a sidelong lurch, we had no more idea than a pair of innocents what land it might be.
Here came our first disagreement. Champe was for sheering off again and waiting for the fog to lift: I said no; that the fog might not lift until dawn, and, in any event, we must land somewhere, sometime. The sergeant gave way, finally, but not without many misgivings openly expressed. Luck was not with us, he said, and it would be our unblest, crooked hap to walk straight into the arms of some of those who were looking for us.
In divided counsels, therefore, we took our stiffened limbs out of their boat crampings, and stamped and beat our arms and got the sluggish blood in motion before we dragged our craft high and dry, and set out to scramble up the steep bank fronting our landing-place. At the top, to our astonishment, we were above the thin skim of fog that lay like a veil on the surface of the water, and could see dimly the surrounding objects.
The first of these was a man, walking slowly and with measured steps toward us on the bank’s edge.
“A sentry,” muttered the sergeant, and we flattened ourselves silently where we were till the soldier passed us, creeping swiftly forward to cross the line a minute later.
Not above a stone’s throw from the waterside we were brought to a stand by a barrier of some sort which, to the sense of touch, proclaimed itself to be a high wooden fence. It was here that Champe gripped my arm and drew me down beside him.
“The luck’s turned, Captain Dick!” he whispered excitedly. “Of all the thousand places where we might have landed, we’ve drifted blindly to the one we were aiming for! This is our garden, and here is the board you kicked loose when you were walking with Sir Judas night before last!”