Captain Sam was so dumfounded he could only gasp and stare vacantly at the place where, by all rights, the Spray ought to be.
The colonel and the squire, who had no preconceived ideas about the passage between the islands, solved the problem at once; but not so the captain.
“They’ve gone through there, you idiot,” exclaimed the squire, growing red in the face. “Where else can they be? They can’t fly, can they?”
The captain groaned, as one whose pride had been cruelly smitten.
“To think,” he muttered, “that I’ve sailed these waters, man and boy, for forty years, only to be fooled by a parcel of schoolboys from the city. Why, every boy in Southport knows you can’t run a sailboat through between Heron and Spring Islands. There ain’t enough water there at high tide to drown a sheep.”
“Well, it seems they got through easy enough,” answered the colonel.
“That’s it! That’s it!” responded the captain, warmly. “They do say as how fools rush in where angels don’t durst to go, and sometimes the fools blunder through all right. And here’s these boys gone and done what I’d a sworn a million times couldn’t be done.”
“Yes, and we probably can get through, too, if we only go ahead and try, instead of lying here like jellyfish,” exclaimed the squire. “Cap’n Sam, seems as though you weren’t so dreadful anxious to catch up with them youngsters as you might be. P’r’aps you might have told Mrs. Warren back there a few things that might explain this ’ere delay.”
“Yes, and if them boys can go through there, I, for one, don’t see what’s to hinder us,” chimed in the colonel. “Cap’n Sam, I don’t see what we’re a-hanging back for.”
And so, his pride humbled, and too mortified to stand by his own better judgment, Captain Sam reluctantly yielded to their importunities, and pointed the nose of the Nancy Jane in toward the opening amid the rocks.