Away they went like two goats up the cliffs. Panting and blazing, they charged down on their amazed playmates, shouting, “A sip! a sip!” but never turning aside nor slacking their pace until they burst with the news on the astonished mutineers.
Something more than astonishment, however, mingled with the feelings of the seamen, and it was not until they had handled the knife, and visited the sandy cove, and seen the foot-prints, and beheld the vessel herself, that they became fully convinced that she had really been close to the island, that men had apparently landed to gather cocoa-nuts, and had gone away without having discovered the settlement, which was hid from their view by the high cliffs to the eastward of Bounty Bay.
The vessel had increased her distance so much by the time the men reached the cove, that it was impossible to make out what she was.
“A man-o’-war, mayhap, sent to search for us,” suggested Quintal.
“Not likely,” said Adams. “If she’d bin sent to search for us, she wouldn’t have contented herself with only pickin’ a few nuts.”
“I should say she is a trader that has got out of her course,” said Young; “but whatever she is, we’ve seen the last of her. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have run the risk of having our hiding-place found out, and of being hung, for the sake of seeing once more the fresh face of a white man.”
He spoke with a touch of sadness in his tone, which contrasted forcibly with the remark that followed.
“It’s little I would care about the risk o’ bein’ scragged,” said Quintal, “if I could only once more have a stiff glass o’ grog an’ a pipe o’ good, strong, genuine baccy!”
“You’ll maybe have the first sooner than you think,” observed McCoy, with a look of intelligence.
“What d’ye mean?” asked Quintal.