“What good would that do? You couldn’t expect them to heave to and go hunting for the White Shark, especially if she is a mail boat. The best she could do would be to land us in some port, and—— G-g-g-great S-s-cott, Tom, pull for your life!”
Both boys snatched up the oars and pulled for all they were worth, digging the oar blades deep into the water.
A spot of light loomed up through the fog. A huge bow towered blackly above them. With the sweat starting from every pore, the boys pulled frantically. They just managed to avoid the vessel which, like a ghost, glided past in the smother. Bright beams came from her portholes and she seemed like a phantom of light as she swept by.
For a minute she shone glitteringly through the mist, and then was gone as quickly as she had appeared. Through the fog came the sound of music and laughter. She was a passenger ship, and there was a gay dance going forward on board. But not one of the dancers so much as dreamed that they had passed almost within a handshake of two lost and miserable boys, adrift on the broad Atlantic in a cockleshell of an open boat.
CHAPTER XXVII.
LAND IS SIGHTED.
The vanishing of the steamer for some reason left with the boys a feeling of blankness and loneliness that had not, with all their distress, been there before.
“Just think of everybody on board that steamer having a good time, and here we are so close to them and so wretched,” grumbled Tom.
“Getting sore about it won’t make things any better, Tom,” admonished Jack. “Let’s be cheerful.”
“Cheerful? Huh!”