“Well, you are hungry!” she observed, “but eat away. I wish I had known before how near you were to us, and I would have brought you provisions.”
“Can you bring them to us now?” asked Bill. “If we do not manage to get off, we shall soon be hungry again.”
“Of course I will,” she answered; “but it would not be safe for me to bring them all the way to the cave. I know, however, a place much nearer this where I could hide them, and you can come and fetch them.”
“But how am I to know the place?” asked Bill.
“I will describe it to you,” answered Jeannette. “You remarked, as you came along, a break in the cliff, with a stream running down the bottom. On the right side of the stream, about ten feet from high-water mark, there is a small hollow just large enough for one person to creep in. I took shelter there once when I was a little girl, having been caught in a storm as I was rambling along the sands so I remember it well.”
Bill thought he could find the place, and would look for it as he went back. Jeannette promised to bring a basket every other day, directly the morning tide went down, so that Bill would know exactly when to go and fetch the food. He thanked her very much, and promised to follow her directions.
He then asked her about a boat, but she could say nothing till her father and Pierre returned. They might know of one, but as there was very small chance of her ever being restored to her owner, while the boys were not likely to have the means of paying for her, she was doubtful.
“As to that,” said Bill, “we shall have plenty of prize-money. I hope to pay for her over and over again; and I will promise most faithfully to do so.”
Jeannette smiled, for she thought that there was very little probability of the two young ship-boys ever getting prize-money sufficient to pay for such a boat as they required, to make a voyage across the Channel.
Bill was anxious to get back to poor Jack, who he remembered was well-nigh starving. Jeannette would have accompanied him part of the way, but she had to remain at home to receive Captain Turgot and Pierre. She had, in the meantime, packed a basket with provisions for Jack and himself, that they might be independent for a couple of days. He therefore jumped up, and, begging her to remember him very kindly to the others, he bade her farewell, and, with the basket on his arm, slipped out of the house as cautiously as he had entered.