About half after eight o'clock a cry ran through the ship, bringing everybody out on the decks.
The captain had discovered the buoy through his glass!
It lay away to the nor'ard, about a mile, and as they approached all could see the streamer, hanging down its pole, a red streak in the sunshine.
"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" The Ark echoed with glad cries from stem to stern. A thousand questions were shouted at the captain on his bridge, but he was imperturbable. He only glanced at his watch, and then said, in an undertone, to Joseph Smith, who stood beside him:
"Forty-seven hours and twenty minutes. By the time we can get the cable back on the drum it will be full forty-eight hours since they started, and the air in the bell could be kept in condition no longer than that. It may take as much as two hours more to draw it up."
"Can you do it so rapidly as that?" asked Smith, his voice trembling.
"I'll do it or bust," returned the captain. "Perhaps they may yet be alive."
Smith turned his eyes upward and clasped his hands. The Ark was put to its utmost speed, and within the time estimated by the captain the cable was once more on the great drum. Before starting it the captain attached the telephone and shouted down. There was no reply.
"Start gently, and then, if she draws, drive for your lubberly lives," he said to the men in charge of the big donkey engine.
The moment it began to turn he inspected the indicator.