He had arrived at this point with great difficulty when the strange silence on board the boat, which had so far only been broken by the lapping of the water and the creaking of the yard, was broken by Vince, who cried excitedly, as he stood up in the boat:
“Look, look, Mike! Nearly everybody’s yonder on the cliff. They’ve heard the firing and the explosion, and they’re watching the cutter chase the schooner.”
Mike rose too, and with beating hearts the two boys stood trying to make out who was on the look-out; but the distance was too great to distinguish faces. Still they stood, steadying each other by clapping hands on shoulders, quite unconscious of the fact that the old man was now gazing at them with a very peculiar expression of countenance, that foreboded anything but good.
All at once, they both lurched and nearly fell, for Daygo’s mind was made up, and he thrust his oar deep down, changing the boat’s course suddenly, and making the sail flap.
“Here, what are you doing?” cried Vince, forced by this to speak to the old man at last.
“Think I want to run my boat into that curran’ an’ get on the rocks? Sit down, will you, and keep outer the way of the sheet.”
For answer the boys went forward, quite out of his way, and the boat rushed on again for some ten minutes before they spoke again, though they had been looking about with gathering uneasiness, for they were growing suspicious, but ashamed to speak because the idea seemed to be absurd.
At last Vince said—
“He’s making a precious long tack, Mike, and I don’t know of any big current here.”
Mike was silent, and they saw now that without doubt they were sailing right away from the island, and were in the full race of the tide. Still they felt that the old man must know best how to make for his tiny port, and they sat in silence for fully twenty minutes, waiting for him to make another tack and run back.