"It's better than crossing the Atlantic in the dark, anyhow. But what a price we got for those fish!"
"They're ready to pay well for such things at the end of the voyage," said Dab. "I expected they'd try and beat us down a peg. They generally do. We only got about fair market price, after all, only we got rid of our whole catch at one sale."
Hour followed hour, and the "Swallow" followed the steamer, and the fog followed them both so densely that sometimes even Dick Lee's keen eyes could with difficulty make out the "Prudhomme's" light. And now Ford Foster ventured to take a bit of a nap, so sure did he feel that all the danger was over, and that "Captain Kinzer" was equal to what Dick Lee called the "nagivation" of that yacht. How long he had slept he could not have guessed, but he was suddenly awakened by a great cry from out the mist beyond them, and the loud exclamation of Dab Kinzer, still at the tiller:
"I believe she's run ashore!"
It was a loud cry, indeed, and there was good reason for it. Well for all on board the great French steamship that she was running no faster at the time, and that there was no hurricane of a gale to make things worse for her. Pilot and captain had both together missed their reckoning,—neither of them could ever afterward tell how,—and there they were stuck fast in the sand, with the noise of breakers ahead of them and the dense fog all around.
Frank Harley peered anxiously over the rail again, but he could not have complained that he was "wrecked in sight of shore;" for the steamer was anything but a wreck yet, and there was no such thing as a shore in sight.
"It's an hour to sunrise," said Dab to Ford, after the latter had managed to comprehend the situation. "We may as well run further in and see what we can see."
It must have been aggravating to the people on the steamer to see that cockle-shell of a yacht dancing safely along over the shoal on which their "leviathan" had struck, and to hear Ford Foster sing out: "If we'd known you meant to run in here, we'd have followed some other pilot."
"They're in no danger at all," said Dab. "If their own boats don't take 'em all ashore, the coast-wreckers will."
"The Government life-savers, I s'pose you mean?"