“I don’t know, sir,” said Jack. “The boat is gone, and the boys are gone, but whether the boat has gone off with the boys, or the boys with the boat, I couldn’t say.”
The captain paused a moment, with a thoughtful expression upon his countenance, and then said,
“Tell Nelson to take the glass, and go aloft, and look around to see if he can see any thing of them.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack.
The captain then resumed his work as if nothing particular had happened.
Mr. Nelson discovers them by means of his spy-glass.
Nelson was the mate of the ship. The mate is the second in command under the captain.
When Nelson received the captain’s order, he took the spy-glass, and went up the shrouds to the mast-head. In about ten minutes he came down again, and gave Jack a message for the captain. Jack came down again into the cabin. He found the captain, as before, busy at his work. The captain had been exposed to too many great and terrible dangers at sea to be much alarmed at the idea of two boys being adrift, in a strong boat and in a crowded harbor.
“Mr. Nelson says, sir,” said Jack, “that he sees our boat, with two boys in it, about a mile and a half down the harbor. She is lying a little to the eastward of the red buoy.”
A buoy is a floating beam of wood, or other light substance, anchored on the point of a shoal, or over a ledge of rocks, to warn the seamen that they must not sail there. The different buoys are painted of different colors, so that they may be easily distinguished one from another.