"I will undertake this unpleasant office," he said, "though I could, in my inmost soul, pray that the necessity for it might pass away. Should the worst arrive, I have still hopes of effecting something by means of a ransom; but what will have been the fate of the youthful, and delicate, and lovely, ere we can make ourselves even comprehended by the barbarians? A journey in the desert, as these journeys have been described to me, would be almost certain death to all but the strongest of our party, and even gold may fail of its usual power, when weighed against the evil nature of savages."
"Is there no hope, then, really left us?" demanded Mr. Sharp, when the last speaker had left them to descend to the cabins. "Is it not possible to get the boat into the water, and to make our escape in that?"
"That is an expedient of which I have thought, but it is next to impracticable. As anything is better than capture, however, I will make one more close examination of the proceedings of the demons, and look nearer into our own means."
Paul Blunt now got a lead and dropped it over the side of the ship, in the almost forlorn hope that possibly she might lie over some hole on the bottom. The soundings proved to be, as indeed he expected, but a little more than three fathoms.
"I had no reason to expect otherwise," he said, as he drew in the line, though he spoke like a disappointed man. "Had there been sufficient water the ship might have been scuttled, and the launch would have floated off the deck; but as it is, we should lose the vessel without a sufficient object. It would appear heroic were you and I to contrive to get on the reef, and to proceed to the shore with a view to make terms with the Arabs; but there could be no real use in it, as the treachery of their character is too well established to look for any benefit from such a step."
"Might they not be kept in play, until our friends returned? Providence may befriend us in some unexpected manner in our uttermost peril."
"We will examine them once more with the glass. By a movement among the Arabs, there has probably been a new accession to their numbers."
The two gentlemen now ascended to the top of the hurricane-house again, in feverish haste, and once more they applied the instrument. A minute of close study induced Mr. Blunt to drop the glass, with an expression that denoted increased concern.
"Can any thing possibly make our prospects worse?" eagerly inquired his companion.
"Do you not remember a flag that was on board the Dane--that by which we identified his nation?"