“What are you going to do?” asked Fred.
“I’ll borrow or hire a horse somewhere, and run a race with Dick.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Eugene, “I know from what you have said that the trapper must be very fleet, but he can’t beat a good horse if I ride him.”
“He can run a hundred yards, and turn and run back to the starting-point, and beat the swiftest horse that ever moved,” replied Archie, emphatically, “and you may ride the horse.”
The boys looked toward Frank, who confirmed Archie’s statement by saying that he had seen him win a race of that description, but still they were not satisfied. It was a novel idea to them, this matching a man’s lightness of foot against the speed of a horse, and they longed for an opportunity to see the swift trapper put to the test.
Meanwhile the work of refitting the vessel went steadily on. Having a large force at his command, the work was accomplished in much less time than the captain expected it could be done. The question whether their proposed visit to Japan and India should be given up was discussed, and decided in the affirmative. Uncle Dick gave the boys their choice of two courses of action: they could carry out their original plan, spend a few weeks in Asia, and after they had seen all they wanted to see they would start directly for home by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, stopping during the voyage only when it was necessary to take in fresh supplies of food and water; or they would go to Natal, purchase there a trader’s outfit, and spend a few months travelling about in the interior of Africa, skirmishing with the strange animals they would find there. In either case they must first go to the nearest port, and have the schooner completely overhauled and refitted. She had been badly strained by the gale, and her captain did not consider her safe. The boys decided on the latter course simply because they knew Uncle Dick wished it.
This was the first time during the voyage that anything had been said about going “home,” and the simple sound of the word was enough to set them to thinking. Up to this time they had been going away from their native land; but now every mile which the schooner passed over brought them nearer to the loved ones they had left behind.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONSUL’S “CLARK.”
Finally, to the Club’s great relief, the work was all done. The masts had been stepped, the sails bent on, the last ratline knotted, and Uncle Dick only waited for a high tide to carry the schooner over the coral reef that marked the entrance to the bay. When the proper moment arrived the crew gladly responded to the order of the old boatswain’s mate, “All hands stand by to get ship under way!” and to the enlivening strains of “The girl I left behind me,” which Eugene played on his flute, walked the little vessel up to her anchor. Then the sails were trimmed to catch the breeze, the star-spangled banner was run up to the peak, and the lonely island echoed to the unwonted sound of a national salute. The first two guns were shotted and were pointed toward the island, as a parting token of the estimation in which its inhabitants were held by the schooner’s company, and the other eleven were fired with blank cartridges.
The boys could not help shuddering as they passed over the reef. Its course could be traced for a mile or more on each side of them. The opening through which they sailed was the only clear space they could see in the whole length of it, and that was barely wide enough to admit of the passage of their little vessel. The Sea Gull could never have got through it; and how they had ever passed it in their waterlogged craft, driven by a furious gale, was something they could not explain. The waves foamed and roared around them, and being thrown back by the rocks, followed in the wake of the schooner as if enraged at being cheated of their prey. The boys trembled while they looked, and all breathed easier when the man in the fore-chains who was heaving the lead, called out “No bottom!” The reef was passed in safety and they were fairly afoot once more; but their vessel was crippled and leaky, and there was not one among the five hundred people who saw her sail so gaily out of the harbor of Bellville who would have recognized her now. She had no topmasts, yards, or flying jibboom, and could only spread four sails where she had once spread nine, and, when the wind was light, ten, not counting the studding-sails. All Uncle Dick asked of her was to take them in safety to Hobart Town, where she could be put in trim for her long voyage across the Indian Ocean.