"Yes, you may all go.--Max, come with me."
Joe hastened back to the boys, shouting, "Come on! Mr. Bernard says we may go over to see the wreck!"
"Good for him! Hurrah, boys! we are off for the wreck."
"What did you say about a wreck?" asked Jonas, as John and Jerry delivered the milk at the cookhouse.
The boys enlightened him, and Jonas, turning to his man Friday, said, "Come on, Freit--we'll let the dishes go;" and seizing his hat he hurried after the boys, who were scampering off towards the lighthouse with the teachers.
They attempted to go by the shorter route over the rocks on the shore, in spite of John's warning, but after some of the party had been drenched by the surf they retreated to the woods.
Joe kept close to Mr. Bernard's side, without speaking a word, and some of the boys behind whispered, "They are afraid it is that vessel that Ralph and Ben went in."
This sobered them all, and there was very little conversation as the crowd hurried on. They could hear the "boom-boom" of the sea against the cliff long before they reached it, and Joe's heart felt heavier than ever.
Ralph had never been a favourite among his schoolmates, and Joe, especially, had never been attracted toward him. Their acquaintance had developed during the last weeks of the school, while the search was being made for the offender; and in helping him then he came to pity him, and feel an interest in him, quite sure that the boy had received a lesson that would make him hesitate to speak an untruth again.
At length John ran through the bushes out on the top of one of the high boulders, where he pointed to the dismantled vessel with the men working at the pumps.