IT was the morning of the 3d of September of the same year,—1814.
Tom and Jack had just finished their breakfast;—it was of broiled fish. Hughy! It makes me shudder even now to think of it, for I do hate the very sight of a fish.
The work of digging at the wreck had settled down to a very jog-trot business by this time. Neither of the men were in a hurry to quit their comfortable seat on the sand and turn to hard work, that had lost all the savor of novelty it had had at first. The first day that they had struck shovel into the sand above the wreck, Jack had started off eagerly, without eating a bite; he was quite willing to eat a meal now,—even a meal of broiled fish—and to take a goodly while to the eating of it also. So they both sat dwadling over their unsavory food, not at all anxious to make a start.
“Well, Jack,” said Tom, at last; “I suppose that we might as well be stirring.”
“I reckon we might,” said Jack, and then he stretched himself, as a first step toward getting up.
At that moment a sound fell upon their ears. It was not one to which you would have given a second thought, and yet if it had been a clap of thunder out of a clear sky, it could not have startled the two more than it did.
When they had rebuilt their hut after it had been destroyed by the great hurricane, they had not located in the same spot in which they had lived before. An eddy of the wind had scooped a hollow out of the side of the sand hill, and it was in the side of this cup-shaped hollow that they had digged their house, and had roofed it in with the cutter as they had done before; for they thought that they would be more sheltered in this spot if another hurricane should come upon them. Looking from this hollow in front of them, they could see nothing but a part of the western ocean and the upper end of the sand-spit, whereupon they worked from day to day. It was just back of them, and from the crest or brim of this sandy bowl that the sound came that startled them so greatly.
It was the sound of a man’s voice.
“Ahoy there!”
For a moment Jack and Tom looked at one another without turning around. This minute I can see just how Jack stared at Tom; his mouth agape, and his eyes as big as saucers. But it was only for a moment that they sat looking at one another so amazedly, for the next instant they jumped to their legs and turned around.