"Are you sure?" I demanded.
"I'm not quite sure, but I saw the twinkle of something away over on the Matuga Island side. It's gone now," the voice added, after a moment's pause; "but I saw something."
We all looked eagerly and anxiously in the direction indicated; but strain our vision as we might, we could not see the faintest gleam or twinkle in the impenetrable darkness to leeward. If there was a light visible, in that or in any other direction, it could only be the anchor-light of the Onward, because both coasts of the gulf were uninhabited; but it seemed to me probable that the man had been deceived by a sparkle of phosphorescence or the gleam of a white foam-crest.
For fully five minutes no one spoke, but all stared into the thick gloom ahead. Then, suddenly, the same voice cried aloud in a tone of still greater excitement, assurance, and certainty, "There it is again! I knew I saw it! It's a ship's light!"
In another moment I caught sight of it myself—a faint, distant, intermittent twinkle on the horizon nearly dead ahead.
"It's the anchor-light of the Onward!" I shouted in fierce excitement. "Spread the corner of the mainsail a little more if you can, boys, so as to give her better steerage-way. We've got to make that ship! Hold her steady on the light, Heck, even if you have to put her in the trough of the sea. We might as well founder as drift past!"
The men forward caught up the loose edges of the mainsail and extended it as widely as possible to the gale, clinging to the thwarts and the stump of the mast to avoid being jerked overboard by the bellying canvas. Heck brought the sloop's head around so that the light was under our bow, and on we staggered through the dark, storm-lashed turmoil of waters, shipping a sea now and then, but half sailing, half drifting toward the anchored bark. The wind came in such fierce gusts and squalls that one could hardly say from what quarter it was blowing; but, as nearly as I could judge in the thick darkness, it had shifted three or four points to the westward. If such were the case, we had a fair chance of making the ship, which lay nearer the eastern than the western coast of the gulf.
"Don't let her head fall off any, Heck," I cried. "Jam her over to the eastward as much as you can, even if the sea comes into her. We can keep her clear with our hats. If we drift past we're gone!"
As we approached the bark the light grew rapidly brighter: but I did not realise how near we were until the lantern, which was hanging in the ship's fore-rigging, swung for an instant behind the jib-stay, and the vessel's illuminated cordage suddenly came out in delicate tracery against the black sky, less than a hundred yards away.
"There she is!" shouted Sandford. "We're close on her!"