“This rain must have got worse since the light-keeper telephoned,” Jack said when they had run a mile south of the breakwater and he was thinking of swinging over on to the other tack. “The shoal is four miles away from the Point, and you can’t make anything out more than half a mile away now. It may let up again soon, though. Keep your eyes skinned, Rod.”
Jack came about as soon as he had room to run clear of the Point’s eastern shore. The loom of the shore was hazy, and as soon as he went about once more and bore away almost due south the mist swallowed up the coast-line entirely. The wind sang shrilly in the rigging and the boys’ faces smarted with the salt spume which whipped their cheeks and at times half blinded them.
“Want to go back?” Jack shouted to his chum, jokingly, when the Sea-Lark in a particularly playful moment had kicked up her heels and dived with somewhat alarming suddenness down a steep green mountain-side, fetching up at the bottom with a splash and burying her nose.
“Not likely,” replied Rod, reveling in the spice of danger which flavored the adventure. “It’s just beginning to be interesting.”
“She’ll fairly skate home straight before this wind,” replied Jack, laughingly. “Here comes a whopper! Look out! Isn’t she a daisy? See the way she rose to it? We must be about half-way out to the Four Fathom bell-buoy now. I thought I heard it ringing just then. Listen!”
Ding-ding-ading! The sound was faintly audible.
“It’s safe enough to keep on till we work our way to that buoy,” said Rod. “Dad and I have been as far as that several times in the motor-boat, but of course only in fine weather.”
“I know the shallow water is all to the north of that buoy,” replied Jack. “What I’m worrying about now is, where is the schooner? There doesn’t seem to be any sign of her. Maybe she’s close up to the shoal.”
For another twenty minutes the sloop ran on, tacking occasionally, and ever approaching nearer the sound of the bell-buoy, the melancholy note of which now came clearly enough across the water.
“Hark!” cried Rod, suddenly.