"I wish I knew how many times he's been wrecked, and where. He must have seen the most awful kind of things."
It had been a black leather case, and now the Captain opened it, taking out a thing that Sam recognized at once.
"It's what they call an opera-glass," he said to himself, but he was wrong.
It was a binocular marine telescope of the finest kind, very much like the glasses which generals use on a battlefield to study the battle with. The Captain was now searching the lines of breakers and the open sea outside of them, and he suddenly lowered his glass to roar:
"Thereaway, boys! Just a few points southerly. Stuck on the outer bar. Hull half out of water. Not a stick standing. Two tug-boats there already, and a steamer. We've got her! Hurrah!"
He kindly held out the glass to Pete, and steadied the boat while the 'longshore boy took a long squint in the direction indicated.
"I've found her!" exclaimed Pete. "But maybe 'tisn't the Narragansett."
"You bet it is," said the Captain. "There didn't two ships o' that kind come ashore at the same time. There aren't many of 'em left nowadays, anyhow—more's the pity! The steamers have run 'em out. But I'll tell you what, boys, there's more real sailin' to be had in an old-fashioned clipper-ship than there is in all the steamers afloat. If there's anything I hate, it's a steamer."
Pete passed the glass along to Sam, but it was almost a full minute before he could find anything but waves to look at. "There she is," he said at last. "I see her, if that's her. Kind of speck." He was getting used to the glass now, and pretty quickly he was as excited as either Pete or the Captain, but he asked, anxiously, "How are we to get there?"
The line of breakers seemed to be in the way, and they looked impassable. Such a boat as the Elephant, or almost any other, would be a mere cork in the grasp of those tremendous rollers.