They had just discovered that two men had managed to clamber up on the foretop-mast stump as the schooner went down, and were now clinging there, waving their arms toward the boys.
"Get the heaving line ready, Randall," said Pete.
"Ay, ay," answered the willing boy.
Peter brought the dinghy broad under the lee of the mast, and getting a good full on her let her luff up straight at the spar, knowing that the sea would quickly kill her way.
"Stand by to catch the line!" he shouted to the men. "Heave!"
Randall hove the line with good judgment, and one of the wrecked sailors catching it took a couple of turns around the mast with it. Randall now hauled the dinghy up close enough to the mast for the two seamen to swing themselves into her. They were gaunt, hollow-eyed, and exhausted, and at Randall's bidding they lay down in the bottom of the dinghy. In three-quarters of an hour the two boys had sailed back to their landing-place inside Mullet Head. There they met the people who had come down to see the wreck, and who now received them with cheers. The two seamen were able to state that they were the sole survivors of a crew of six, the other four having been carried overboard when the mainmast went over Thursday night. Old Mr. Peddie volunteered to take the men up to the town in his carriage, and as they climbed out of the boat he exclaimed to one of them,
"Hold on! let me look at you! Aren't you Joseph Spring?"
"Yes," said the man, hanging his head; "I am."
"Well, boys," said Mr. Peddie, "you've done a fine Sunday-morning's work. This is Joe Spring, who quarrelled with his father and ran away to sea four years ago. There will be a happy reunion in one house to-day."
Peter and Randall have a fine Block Island boat now, the gift of their admiring fellow townsmen.