“That’s land, isn’t it, captain?” I said, pointing to a low line on our left.
“Ay, worse luck,” he said.
“Worse luck, captain? Why, we could get ashore if we did not overtake the schooner.”
“Get ashore! Who wants to get ashore, boy? That’s where my schooner will be. He’ll run her on the reefs, as sure as I’m longing for two-foot of rope’s-end and a brown back afore me.”
“A crown apiece for you, my lads, as soon as you get us aboard,” cried the doctor, who had been looking uneasily at the men.
His words acted like magic, and the oars bent, while the water rattled and pattered under our bows.
“That’s the sort o’ fire to get up steam, doctor,” said the captain; “but we shall never overtake my vessel, unless something happens. I’d no business to leave her, and bring away my men.”
“I’m sorry, captain,” I said deprecatingly. “It seems as if it were my fault.”
“Not it,” he said kindly. “It was my fault, lad—mine.”
All this while the mist was steadily moving down upon us, and the captain was watching it with gloomy looks when his eyes were not fixed upon the schooner, which kept on gliding away. The doctor’s face, too, wore a very serious look, which impressed me more perhaps than the threatenings of the storm. For, though I knew how terrible the hurricanes were at times, my experience had always been of them ashore, and I was profoundly ignorant of what a typhoon might be at sea.