,
and he listened as though he could scarce believe his senses.

As he listened, the sounds came again, and this time much louder.

There was now no mistake about it. It was a regular boat, which Tom
knew well to be the peculiar sound made by the floats of a steamer's
paddles. He had often heard it. He had but recently heard it, when
the revenue steamer was approaching the Antelope, and again during the
foggy night, when the whistle roused them, and the same beat of the
paddles came over the midnight waters.

And now, too, he heard it.

He gave a shout of joy, and started off to catch sight of her.

For a few paces only he ran, and then stopped.

He was puzzled. He did not know in which direction it was best to go.
He was at the west end of the island, but could not make out very well
the direction of the sounds. He tried to think whether the steamer
would pass the island on the north side or the south. He did not know,
but it seemed to him that she would certainly go to the north of it.
There was no time to be lost, and standing there to listen did not seem
to be of any use, even if his impatience had allowed him to do so.
Accordingly he hurried back by the way that he had come along the north
side of the island.

For some time he ran along through the trees, and at length, in about
fifteen or twenty minutes, he reached the place where the dense
underbrush was, by the edge of the cliff. From this point a wide view
was commanded. On reaching it he looked out, and then up the bay,
towards the Straits of Minas. He could see almost up to the straits,
but no steamer appeared. For a moment he stood bewildered, and then
the thought came to him, that he had mistaken altogether the steamer's
course. She could not be coming down on the north side of the island,
but on the south side. With a cry of grief he started back again,
mourning over his error, and the time that he had lost. On reaching
the more open wood, he thought that it would be better to hurry across
the island to the south side, and proceeded at once to do so. The way
was rough and tedious. Once or twice he had to burst through thickets
of alder, and several times he had to climb over windfalls. At length,
in his confusion, he lost his way altogether; he had to stop and think.
The shadows of the trees showed him where the south lay, and he resumed
his journey. At length, after most exhaustive efforts, he reached a
part of the cliff, where a fr