and Jack again levelled his rifle.

"Don't fire, it is the hat and jacket of Willis!"

"What!" exclaimed Ernest, "is the Pilot a triton then, that he could
dispense with the canoe?"

"Well, yes, unless the canoe has found its way back of its own accord,
which would indeed make it an intelligent creature."

"The Pilot has evidently reached Shark's Island by swimming, in spite
of surf and breakers--a feat almost without a parallel."

"Bah!" said Ernest, parodying Jack's witticism about the oars, "what
does a pilot care about surf and breakers?"

Strongly moored in a creek of the Jackal River, and protected by a
bluff, forming a screen between it and the sea, the pinnace had in no
way suffered from the storm.

The swell was so violent, that they had a world of trouble in making
the island; as they approached, Willis, who had made a speaking-trumpet
by joining his hands round his mouth, was roaring out alternately,
"starboard," "larboard," "hard-a-port," just as if these terms had
not been Hebrew to the impromptu mariners.

At last, tired of holloaing, "Stop a bit," he said, "I shall find a
quicker way;" with that he threw himself directly into the sea, and
cut through the waves towards them as if his arms had been driven by a
steam engine.

Arrived on board, he gave a vigorous turn to the tiller, laid hold of
the sheet, let out a reef here, took in another there; the pinnace was
soon completely at his command, and behaved admirably; true, she
pitched furiously, and the gunwale was under water at every plunge. He
headed along the coast till the point beyond which Fritz had first
observed the _Nelson_ was fairly doubled; some days before this point
was called Cape Deliverance, it was now, perhaps, about to acquire the
term of Cape Disappointment, but for the moment its future designation
was in embryo.

Leaping on the poop, Willis carefully scanned the horizon as the boat
rose upon the summit of the waves; but seeing nothing, he at last
leapt down again with an expression of rage that, under other
circumstances, would have been irresistibly comic. Abandoning the
direction of the pinnace, he went and sat down on a bulk-head, and
covered his face with his hands, in an attitude of profound
desolation.

"Willis! Willis!" cried Jack, "I shall tell Sophia."

But there was neither the soft voice there, the caressing hand, nor
the sweet fascination of the young girl's presence, and Willis
continued immovable.

Bec