“The boat has gone!” answered Billy; “we can’t see her anywhere, not even a bit of her wreck.”
“Faith! that’s bad news,” exclaimed Desmond; “but did you look everywhere? for, remember, everywhere means a good wide space.”
“No, we did not go right up to the spot, for there was no use in doing that,” answered Billy.
“Then we will, and perhaps we may discover some signs which may indicate the direction in which she has been driven,” said Tom.
They accordingly set off. Tom observed what Billy had failed to do, that the shape of the beach was greatly altered, the wind having driven the sand far higher up than usual, so that in some parts it had risen to the height of the bank on which grass and shrubs grew. Indeed, a portion of the grassy ground had itself been covered up by the sand.
“What shall we do without the boat?” cried Billy; “we shall have to spend our lives here, I suppose, if the ship has been lost, and the men say that they think she had very little chance of escaping.”
“I hope they are wrong in their conjectures,” answered Tom; “and as for the boat, I am not quite so certain that she is lost, although we may have some trouble in finding her.”
On arriving at that part of the beach where the boat had been left, Tom looked round in every direction, and examined carefully the bushes and herbage along the edge of the beach.
“If she was driven in this direction, she would have broken some of these bushes, but they do not appear to have been injured,” he observed. “Now, let us see whereabouts she lay. Do you think you can tell, Bird?” The seaman examined the ground.
“I remember coming through just such a clump of bushes as these, directly after I left her; and look there, sir, there is her rudder and a stretcher,” and he enumerated other articles belonging to the boat. Then stepping back, he said, “I’m sure it was just hereabouts where she lay.”