“Hear a what?” exclaimed Breeze, for as yet he had heard nothing.
“Steamboat! You no hear um steamboat coming?”
“No, I’m sure I don’t, nor you either. There aren’t any steamboats in these waters. What you hear must be the surf on the rocks.”
But Nimbus insisted that he did hear a steamboat, and after a while Breeze began to think that he too heard it. In a few minutes more there could be no doubt of it. It was the regular, unmistakable throb of a screw propeller; and though they could not for some time be certain from which direction it came, it was surely approaching them, and renewed hope sprang within their breasts as they listened to it.
At length they saw a thick column of smoke rising beyond a long promontory to the north of them, and soon afterwards the low, black hull and raking masts of a steam-yacht rounded the point and bore swiftly down upon them.
THE YACHT CAME DIRECTLY TOWARDS THEM.
For fear they would not be noticed, Breeze stood up and waved his hat. But there was no necessity for this. The yacht came as directly towards them as though their dory were the object for which it was steering, and it even began to look as though they were going to be run down. At last, when they could see the water jetting up like a fountain before her sharp prow, and could distinguish the features of the seamen, who gazed curiously at them from over her bows, she sheered a little to one side, as though about to pass them.
“Stop! Hold on!” screamed Breeze. “Don’t go off and leave us!”
“Well, by Jove! that’s odd,” said a young man who stood on the yacht’s bridge to an older one who occupied it with him, though of course those in the dory did not hear him; “I thought those fellows were native fishermen, and here they are hailing us in English.” As he spoke, he gave a brass handle in front of him a quick pull.