Actually, the boat was not more than five or six cables’ length away when a light flashed out at the spot where the guns stood under their shed.
Was it the flash from a gun? Was the air about to be rent by an explosion?
And then, caring no longer whether the savages heard him or not, the boatswain stood up and shouted in stentorian tones:
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Friends—we are friends!” shouted Captain Gould.
And Fritz and Frank together called again and yet again:
“It’s we! It’s we! It’s we!”
The instant they touched the rocks they fell into the arms of their friends.
CHAPTER XIV
A PERILOUS PLIGHT
A few minutes later the two families—complete this time—with Captain Harry Gould and the boatswain, were together in the store-house in the middle of the island, five hundred paces from the battery knoll over which the flag of New Switzerland floated.