“Well, tar my old rigging!” cried the other, obstinately. “I heard something just then, and I’m going to see what it was.”
The speaker leaped out upon the sand, a cutlass in his right hand and a lantern in his left. He slowly advanced, his lantern flashing this way and that, until at last its rays rested upon a bronzed, youthful, smiling face gazing calmly, from the sand, into his own.
“Tom Deering,” he almost shouted, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Uncle Dick!” cried Tom in return, and in a moment he had sprung to his feet and gripped the old sea-dog in a hug like that of a cinnamon bear.
“Easy, lad, easy!” gasped Uncle Dick. “If you grip me any tighter you’ll smash my hull and bring the masts by the board.”
He wrung his nephew’s hand warmly, his weather-beaten face all wrinkled with smiles, his long gray cue almost bristling from pure joy.
“I thought you were one of the enemy’s spies,” said he at last after he had greeted the grinning Cole, and had had Nat presented to him. “But what in old Neptune brings you here? Tell me all about it.”
In a few moments Tom had acquainted him with the facts of his expedition to Charleston. The old man wrung his hand once more as he finished.
“Brave boy,” cried he, delighted beyond measure. “So you saved Laura from that swab, Harwood, did you! Well, you’ll never do a better thing in your life! And you have a company of friends back there a piece, did you say?”
“Yes, there are a round score of us, all told.”