“Gone!” thought the boy, whose heart was now beating heavily. “They must have seen our light and taken alarm. That’s bad. No,” he added to himself, “it’s good—capital, for it must mean that that was the light of the vessel we were after. Any honest skipper wouldn’t have taken the alarm.”
“Use your eyes, Burnett, my lad,” whispered the lieutenant, bending down. “We must have been close up to her when that idiot gave the alarm. See anything?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, tut, tut, tut, tut!” came in a low muttering tone.
“Look, boy, look; we must see her somehow. How are we to go back and face the captain if we fail like this?”
The boy made no reply, but strained his eyes again, to see darkness everywhere that appeared to be growing darker moment by moment, except in one spot, evidently where the land lay, and there a dull yellowish light glared out that seemed to keep on winking at them derisively, now fairly bright, now disappearing all at once, as the lantern revolved.
“Hold hard!” whispered the lieutenant, and the men lay on their oars, with the boat gradually slackening its speed till it rose and fell, rocking slowly on the choppy sea, and the eye-like lantern gave another derisive wink twice, and then seemed to shut itself up tight.
“It’s of no use to pull, Burnett,” whispered the lieutenant. “We may be going right away. See anything, my lads?”
“No, sir,” came in a low murmur, and the culprit who had gone to sleep sat and shivered as he thought of the “wigging,” as he termed it, that would be his when he went back on board the gunboat; and as the boat rocked now in regular motion the darkness seemed to grow more profound, while the silence to the midshipman seemed to be awful.
He was miserable too with disappointment, for he felt so mixed up with the expedition that it seemed to him as if he was in fault, and that when they returned he would have to share in the blame that Captain Glossop would, as he termed it, “lay on thick.”