“If we only knew whereabouts we was we’d know where to steer; but we’ve turned about sich a lot, that I’d be puzzled to tell.”
“So would I,” agreed Bob. “But, I tell you what I think. Let us run before the wind. It’ll be sure to bring us somewhere, at all events, in the end!”
“Aye, that it would, sure-ly, Master Bob,” cried Dick, surprised at the other’s cleverness. “I declare I never as much as thought o’ that!”
Thereupon, they wore the little cutter round, she having been previously going like a crab sideways, which fully accounted for the lively motion that had aroused them; and, Bob having stationed himself at the helm, which he had put hard over, Dick mounted up on the fo’c’s’le to act as look-out, in case they should run against anything in the semi-darkness around them, or, more happily still, come in sight of land.
They had not long occupied their respective positions, when Bob’s attention was attracted by a cry of alarm from his companion in the bows.
“Lawks a mussy!” yelled out Dick in accents of unfeigned terror. “I sees a white ghostess a-flying down on us, with big wings like a h’angel!”
“Nonsense, Dick!” cried Bob from aft, trying to peer ahead under the belly of the sail as he was sitting to leeward. “There are no such things as ghosts; and, besides, I don’t see anything at all but the fog and the water!”
“Oh, lawks, Master Bob!” screamed the frightened Dick in answer to this. “Look t’other side and then you’ll p’r’aps believe me. Look t’other side! Look t’other side! I bees afeered! I bees afeered!”
Bob shifted his seat to windward, so as to get a better view forwards and see what had alarmed Dick.
“Why, Dick, it’s a ship!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight the next instant. “What you thought are angel’s wings are the vessel’s sails, though they are angel’s wings to us!”