“What!” cried Jack.
“Steady, sir, steady. Don’t jump out of the boat.”
“But you don’t mean—”
“Oh yes, I do, sir. Look yonder.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried Jack bitterly; “that must be a star setting in the west.”
“Well, it may be, sir, and if it is, it’s so close down that in another five minutes it’ll be one; but it strikes me that there’s a little lighter look yonder, and that it’s the east. Of course I don’t know for certain like, and I’ve been asleep. Let’s watch for a bit. I believe it’s our star as the guv’nor’s had lit up to let us know he’s coming after us—that’s what I think, sir.”
“It is too much to hope,” said Jack despondently.
“Not a bit, sir. You can’t say but what it’s as likely as likely. But there, we shall soon know. I wonder whether the niggers have seen it yet.”
Evidently they had not, and this, knowing how sharp-eyed they were, strengthened Jack’s belief that it was only a star, and he said so.
“All right, sir,” said Ned, after a long watching, “pr’a’ps you’re right; but it’s a new kind if it is, for it don’t come up nor it don’t go down. Anyhow that’s the east, for the sun means to come up there, or I’m a Dutchman.”