Great was the rage of Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett when they discovered that the boys had escaped.
“But it will be only so much the worse for them in the end,” said the squire. “The fact of their running away is a confession of guilt, and will count hard against them when we once get them into court.
“Colonel,” he continued, gazing off on to the bay, “I believe that’s them now, about two miles down along the shore. Cap’n Sam, you’re a sure judge of a sail. Isn’t that the Spray beating down along the island, just off Billy Jones’s beach?”
Captain Sam took a most deliberate observation, turned a chew of tobacco twice in his cheek, and then remarked, laconically:
“That’s the Spray, sure’s a gun. There is no mistaking the queer set of that gaff-topsail. It always was a bad fit, and it sticks out just as crooked like, two miles away, as it does close on. Y-a-a-s, there’s the youngsters, and no mistake.”
Captain Sam did not see fit, however, though a constable, sworn to do his duty, as the others had suggested, to explain that he had seen the Spray for the last hour or more, and that he had been conscious all along of the precious time they were losing. But a sharp observer might have detected him chuckling down deep in his throat as the colonel and the squire stormed and raged.
“Well, what are we going to do?” cried Squire Brackett. “We’re losing valuable time here. That little boat eats fast into the wind, they say, and we have got to get started pretty quick if we expect to overhaul her between now and dark.
“Come! What do you say, Cap’n Sam? You know the boats in the harbour better than I do. Whose is the best one to go after them with?”
“Wa-al,” drawled Cap’n Sam, “if I do say it, I suppose the Nancy Jane is about as good as any in a long thrash to windward,—if she does belong to me. She’s big and she’s roomy, and there’s a comfortable cabin in her for you and the colonel—for I suppose you’ll want to go along.”
“Go along!” exclaimed Colonel Witham. “I should say we did—eh, squire? When these ’ere warrants are served I want to be there to see it done, and so does the squire, I reckon.”