“Emilia is out sailing!” he exclaimed,—“alone with Lambert’s boatman, in this gale. They say she was bound for Narragansett.”
“Impossible!” cried Hope, turning pale. “I left her not three hours ago.” Then she remembered that Emilia had spoken of going on board the yacht, to superintend some arrangements, but had said no more about it, when she opposed it.
“Harry!” said Aunt Jane, quickly, from her chair by the window, “see that fisherman. He has just come ashore and is telling something. Ask him.”
The fisherman had indeed seen Lambert’s boat, which was well known. Something seemed to be the matter with the sail, but before the storm struck her, it had been hauled down. They must have taken in water enough, as it was. He had himself been obliged to bail out three times, running in from the reef.
“Was there any landing which they could reach?” Harry asked.
There was none,—but the light-ship lay right in their track, and if they had good luck, they might get aboard of her.
“The boatman?” said Philip, anxiously,—“Mr. Lambert’s boatman; is he a good sailor?”
“Don’t know,” was the reply. “Stranger here. Dutchman, Frenchman, Portegee, or some kind of a foreigner.”
“Seems to understand himself in a boat,” said another.
“Mr. Malbone knows him,” said a third. “The same that dove with the young woman under the steamboat paddles.”