“There’s the boat you were wishing for,” said Jones, suddenly. “Now you can have a race if you want it.”
Enoch looked around, and was surprised as well as startled to see a handsome little yacht scarcely more than a mile distant from them and following in their wake. She was carrying an immense spread of canvas, considering the breeze that was blowing and the sea that was running, but that her captain was not satisfied with the speed she was making was evident from the fact that while the deserters looked at her, they saw a couple of her crew mount to the cross-trees to shake out the gaff-topsails.
“That’s the most suspicious-looking fellow we have seen yet,” remarked Enoch, after he had taken a good look at the stranger. “He don’t crack on in that style for nothing. Hallo! what’s the matter with you?” he added, as Jones gave a sudden start and came very near dropping the spy-glass which he had leveled at the yacht.
“They’re after us, as sure as the world,” exclaimed Jones, in great excitement. “Those fellows who are going aloft are dressed in uniform.”
“Then we’re as good as captured,” said Enoch, spitefully. “There isn’t a single boy in the band who can go up and loosen the topsails, or whom I dare trust at the wheel while I do it. If I had as good a crew as he has, I’d beat him or carry something away; but what can I do with a lot of haymakers.”
“There’s another boat right ahead of us,” said one of the deserters.
Enoch was not a little astonished as well as frightened by the sight that met his gaze when he turned his eyes from the pursuing yacht to the boat in advance of them. He expected to find that she also was full of students; but instead of that she was a complete wreck. Her mast had gone by the board and was now dragging alongside, pounding the doomed yacht with fearful violence every time a wave rose and fell beneath it. There was no small boat to be seen, and Enoch thought at first that the sloop had been abandoned; but when she was lifted on the crest of a billow and he obtained a better view of her, he was horrified to discover that there were three men and a woman lashed to the rigging. The sight was a most unexpected one, and for a minute or two Enoch could not speak. He stood as if he had grown fast to the deck, and then all the manhood there was in him came to the surface. Those helpless people must be taken off that wreck at all hazards. He looked at the pursuing yacht, and then he looked at the sloop. The former was coming up hand over hand, but she was still far away, and the sloop might go to the bottom at any moment. Probably she was kept afloat by water-tight compartments. The spar that was towing alongside would very soon smash them in, and then she would go down like a piece of lead, being heavily ballasted and having no buoyant cargo to sustain her.
“Jones,” said Enoch, speaking rapidly but calmly, “you have stood by me like a good fellow so far, and you mustn’t go back on me now. Come here and take the wheel. I am going to save that lady or go to the bottom while trying.”
“Are you going off in the dory?” faltered Jones, as he laid his hands upon the wheel.
“Of course. There’s nothing else I can do.”