"Don't go too close to the white water, youngster," said one of the junior officers, who had come on deck, "or you'll be a Robinson Crusoe before you know it."
"Thank you, sir," replied Bobby, as he hastened down the companion ladder. He had to make a leap of it into the cutter, where the men were waiting for him, in no pleasant frame of mind at the prospect of a long pull so early. In another minute they were heading shorewards. On board the ship, so used had every one become to the slow rolling, that it was hard to believe that such a sea was running. But from the boat the ground-swells seemed great hills, so smooth that an oar left a swirl in the green water as a paddle might in a mill-pond.
They had rowed some distance, now climbing up slowly, then coasting down with a rush, before Bobby caught sight of the floating object gleaming on the top of a great lift of sea a mile nearer the shore; he pointed it out to the coxswain, and sat down to read his letters.
As he drew the package from his breast he became conscious that it would not be quite comfortable to open it with twelve pairs of curious eyes gazing at him, so he brought forth only two of the letters with an affectation of carelessness, tied up the rest of the little bundle, and thrust it back into his jacket again.
Sitting there in the stern-sheets of the cutter, with the scorching African sun overhead, and the "thrim-thrum" of oars in his ears, once more his thoughts jumped back to the snow and the sleigh-bells as he opened the first little note. It was written in lead-pencil on very fancy paper, all posies and forget-me-nots. Nor was it written exactly. Most of the words were printed in capital letters, the I's carefully dotted, and the T's laboriously crossed. The lump came into Bobby's throat as he read it slowly.
"Dear Brother Robert" [it began],—"I made this for you all myself. Merry Christmas. I have a kitten and its name is—"
The boat had given such a sickening downward swoop that Bobby looked up suddenly. Never had he seen such a wave in all his short experience. And the sensation! It reminded him of the time he was tossed in a blanket at Annapolis. Yet the water's surface was smooth and oily—not the sound of a ripple—dead silence.
The men slackened in their stroke as another came on astern and raised them upwards. When at its summit Bobby looked towards the shore.
Nothing but a succession of green ridges. But suddenly a line of white like a rip in a great cloth stretched along against the mass of foliage above the beach. Then down the cutter raced.