"Neither, sir,—but a boat adrift."
"How does it bear, Ned?" asked Hislop, starting into the rigging.
"On the starboard bow, about two miles off."
On hearing this the telescope was resorted to, and we could plainly enough see a white object, which the intervening waves, as they rose and fell, hid from us at times; and there was a great diversity of opinion, for one of the crew maintained it was a harbor buoy adrift.
"It must have drifted a long way to have come here," retorted Carlton; "and if you have your grandmother's spectacles about you, wipe them clean, put them on, and look again,—for I can see plainly enough that it is a boat."
"Then we shall overhaul it," said Weston; "Hislop, prepare to lower ours, and to lay the fore-yard aback."
The Eugenie's course was shaped toward it, and when within a quarter of a mile, the foresail was laid to the mast, the brig hove in the wind, and the stern boat lowered; Hislop, Tom Lambourne, two other hands, and I, manned her, and put off to inspect and report upon what we could discover. And so, with many surmises as to wrecks, boats getting adrift or being washed away from their davits, and so forth, we pulled swiftly toward her, all stripped to our shirtsleeves, for a hot West Indian sun was blazing in a cloudless sky, and the air seemed still and breathless.
CHAPTER XVII.
ANTONIO EL CUBANO.
As the strange boat pitched about on the waves some of our men asserted that, at times, they could see a man's head above the gunwale. Others expressed their doubts of this, and in the midst of such discussions we sheered alongside. Hislop caught its bow by the boat-hook, and while retaining his hold, fended off, to prevent her being dashed against ours.