The provisions were taken from the bags and all ate. There was food for several days, in any case. And might not all fear of spending a winter in Turtle Bay soon be banished for ever?
Night fell—an endless night it seemed, whose long drawn hours no one could ever forget, except little Bob, who slept in his mother’s arms. Utter darkness reigned. From the sea-coast the lights of a ship would have been visible several miles out at sea.
Captain Gould, and most of the others, insisted on remaining afoot until daybreak. Their eyes incessantly wandered over the east and west and south, in the hope of seeing a vessel passing off the island, and not without fears that she might leave it astern, never to return to it. Had they been in Turtle Bay at this moment, they would have lighted a fire upon the end of the promontory. Here, that was impossible.
No light shone out before the return of dawn, no report broke the silence of the night, no ship came in sight of the island.
The men began to wonder whether they had not been mistaken, if they had not taken for the sound of cannon what might only have been the roar of some distant storm.
“No, no,” Fritz insisted, “we were not mistaken! It really was a cannon firing out there in the north, a good long way away.”
“I’m sure of it,” the boatswain replied.
“But why should they be firing guns?” James Wolston urged.
“Either in salute or in self-defence,” Fritz answered.
“Perhaps some savages have landed on the island and made an attack,” Frank suggested.