“Never mind my feelings; speak out.”
“I have thought so for the past two days,” said Roylance, gravely. “When Captain Belton put us ashore here, he meant to be in constant communication with the rock. He knew that we could do little without his help, and his being close at hand.”
“But the storm made him put to sea,” said Syd, excitedly. “I know enough of navigation for that, though I’ve not been a sailor long. I’ve heard my father and my uncle talk about it; and he has not had time yet to come back.”
His two companions were silent.
“Do you hear what I say? He has not had time to come back.”
Still there was no reply, and Syd turned sharply away to go to the stores and make out for himself how long their provisions would last. But in his bewildered state, with the cares of his position increasing at a terrible rate, the task was more than he cared to see to, and asking himself what he should do, he took his way up the higher side of the gap, climbing slowly, with the heat making him feel faint, higher and higher, till he stood where the well-guyed flag-pole rose up with its halyards flapping against the side.
“It seems too much for me,” he thought, “and I may be wrong, but Terry looked pleased at my being so worried. No water; the provisions running out; my father’s ship lost—no, I will not believe that. He’s too clever. It only wants the enemy to come out now and attack us to make it more than I can bear.”
He stood with one arm round the flagstaff, gazing at the distant port of Saint Jacques, wondering whether the people there knew of the English occupying the rock, and if they did, whether they would make an effort to drive them out.
But though he gazed long at the houses, which looked white in the sunshine, there was nothing to be seen, and he swept the horizon once more to see the dazzling blue sea everywhere, but no sail in sight.
He sighed as he let his anxious eyes rest on the deep soft blue of the water, close in, and became interested directly, for in one spot a cloud of silver seemed to be sweeping along—a cloud which, from his south coast life, he was not long in determining to be a great shoal of fish playing on the surface, and leaping out clear every now and then as they fed on the small fry that vainly endeavoured to escape.