“That isn’t the mainland,” George declared presently. “It’s only a little bit of a place. It surely can’t be Lobster Island! That’s forty miles or more away from Greenport.”
“Well, how far do you think we’ve drifted in the last twenty hours or so?” asked the other. “I haven’t the least notion where this place is, but I shouldn’t be surprised if we had gone as far as Lobster Island. It’s a mercy we didn’t bump up against it during the night. We’d have been broken to splinters in that surf.”
“I guess it is Lobster Island,” said George. “There isn’t any other place it could be. Does anybody live on it?”
“I don’t believe so,” replied the captain. “But even so, I’m going to dump this packet on the shore.”
“You can’t, Jack, without wrecking her.”
“Maybe, and maybe not. Anyway, it’s about the only chance I see sticking up at present. Wait till we drift more to leeward of the island; then I’m going to make it or bust.”
This sudden appearance of land was the most welcome sight Jack could have imagined, but there remained a good deal of deep water between them and it; and he was by no means certain that, in the sloop’s badly crippled condition, she could be urged under the lee shore. Meanwhile, as the Sea-Lark drifted, the boy made ready to hoist the throat of the mainsail, and when the sloop was slowly going past he hauled up part of the jib.
The sloop shipped a heavy sea during this operation, and when the canvas bellied she was almost awash. But, on reaching the comparatively smooth water under the lee of the little island she became more tractable and by dint of delicate handling the boy was able to run her ashore on a sheltered, sandy beach.
The moment the keel grounded the two lads, dripping wet though they were—worn out with the hardest and longest spell of toil they had ever known, and hungry as hunters—looked at each other and laughed.