But, now, a strange thing happened.
No sooner had the cutter’s bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.
“Hi, Rover, come back, sir!” yelled out Bob, at the pitch of his voice—“Rover, come back!”
But, the dog, although hitherto always obedient to his young master’s call, paid no attention to it now, turning a deaf ear to all his whistles and shouts and swimming steadily towards the shore.
“Poor Rover, he’ll be drownded, sure-ly!” said Dick. “Don’t ’ee think we’d better go arter he, poor chap?”
“Not a bit of it!” replied Bob, angry at the dog’s desertion, as he thought it, putting down Rover’s behaviour to some strange dislike on his part to being in the yacht, at all events when she was moving briskly through the water. “He has swum twice as far in the river in London, and I won’t go after him!”
Bob, however, brought the little yacht up to the wind again, watching until Rover was seen to emerge from the sea and crawl up on the beach again; when the cutter’s head was allowed to pay off again, and within a couple of hours or so, although neither of the boys took any note of how the time was going, they had not only passed the Nab but were now nearing the Ower’s light-ship.
Not till then did Dick become aware how far they had reached out, Portsmouth having long since disappeared and even the forts beginning to show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.
“Master Bob, Master Bob!” he cried in consternation, never having been so far out before, even with the Captain. “Do ’ee know where we be now?”
“Why, out at sea, to be sure!” said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron’s corsair— “O’er the glad waters of the deep blue sea.”