"Are you simply reckoning on laying off the islands?" I asked, understanding that a man might swim ashore at one point while we were at another, and easily fail of finding us.
"I reckon that some of us will take to the canoe, an' cruise off the western shore lookin' for him. His best time for makin' the try will be when the last dog-watch goes off duty at eight o'clock, or again at midnight. It won't be easy to paddle 'round so long; but it's a man's life that you're after."
"Jerry and I will go in the canoe," I said, thinking it no more than right for us to perform the greatest share of the labor since we were held, by Darius, responsible for making the attempt to aid the sailor.
We made a hearty supper that night, eating the last of the ham, and frying a generous quantity of oysters with it, and then the pungy was hove to on the westward side of the large island, as near inshore as we dared to run.
I proposed that she be anchored lest the wind set her on the beach; but Darius claimed that it was necessary for us to be ready to leave at a moment's notice, and promised to have an eye on the craft all the while we were absent.
Then Jerry and I took to the canoe, with good prospect of half a night's work before us, and paddled around to the eastward, after which we set about going back and forth for a distance of a quarter of a mile, since that seemed to be the place a man naturally would make for.
We could see the riding lights of the ship plainly, and although it would require considerable labor to swim so far, it should be readily done by one who was at all familiar with the work.
"We'd find ourselves in a pretty hobble if a boat put off from the ship just now," Jerry said in a low tone, and I was angry with him for having offered such a suggestion. There was enough in the venture to make a fellow nervous, without conjuring up all the possibilities at a time when one needed to have his wits about him.
"We won't think of anything except trying to pick the poor man up," I said sharply. "This isn't the kind of work that suits me, and I'm not so cold-blooded that I can picture out all the trouble which may come upon us."
"A fellow can't help thinkin'," Jerry replied grumpily, and I said yet more curtly: