“Sir, she is the Spurn Head yawl,” answered Dick Hackerbody, who was famed for long sight, but could see nothing with a telescope. “I can see the patch of her foresail.”
“She is looking for us. We are the wrong way of the moon. Ship oars, lads; bear up for her.”
In ten minutes' time the two boats came to speaking distance off Bempton Cliffs, and the windmill, that vexed Willie Anerley so, looked bare and black on the highland. There were only two men in the Spurn Head boat—not half enough to manage her. “Well, what is it?” shouted Carroway.
“Robin Lyth has made his land-fall on Burlington Sands, opposite your honor's door, sir. There was only two of us to stop him, and the man as is deaf and dumb.”
“I know it,” said Carroway, too wroth to swear. “My boy of eight years old is worth the entire boiling of you. You got into a rabbit-hole, and ran to tell your mammy.”
“Captain, I never had no mammy,” the other man answered, with his feelings hurt. “I come to tell you, sir; and something, if you please, for your own ear, if agreeable.”
“Nothing is agreeable. But let me have it. Hold on; I will come aboard of you.”
The lieutenant stepped into the Spurn Head boat with confident activity, and ordered his own to haul off a little, while the stranger bent down to him in the stern, and whispered.
“Now are you quite certain of this?” asked Carroway, with his grim face glowing in the moonlight, “I have had such a heap of cock and bulls about it. Morcom, are you certain?”
“As certain, sir, as that I stand here, and you sit there, commander. Put me under guard, with a pistol to my ear, and shoot me if it turns out to be a lie.”