The shout startled Frank, and, with a sick heart and quivering lips, he saw the Sea Eagle slowly turn broadside toward the sea, and then fall off into deep water. The staunch old schooner was afloat once more, as sound as the day she was launched.
The pilot-boat was brought alongside and made fast, then they bent on all the sail they could muster, and, as the hastily-rigged canvas caught the wind, Sagasta waved his sailor-cap and exultantly exclaimed:
"Here's to Captain Thorne, a hundred fathoms below soundings; and here's to the Sea Eagle and her new commander!"
All repeated Sagasta's shout with a hearty good will, for they were now fairly under way--the Spaniard, Chris and the mulatto remaining on the schooner, and Montes alone managing the pilot-boat.
Frank never took his eyes off the vessels, which kept close company, till both were nearly out of sight. Then he removed the stone, crept through the opening, and ran to the spot where only the ashes of the wreckers' fire were to be seen.
He felt unutterably lonely. To look at the beach and not see the schooner there was like missing for the first time the face of a dear and only friend. He sat down on the sand and listened sadly to the moan of the surf fretting along the beach and the hollow boom of the breakers dashing against the reef.
The Sea Eagle now was but the merest speck on the ocean. It disappeared utterly, and the sun set in a bank of wrathy, black clouds.
Frank returned to the cave, too miserable to care for any supper, lay down on his bed, drew the blanket over his head and sobbed himself to sleep.
Lester Drake's detective camera first created the idea of photography in my mind. Before that, I hadn't the slightest inclination toward the art whatever, but when Lester purchased his neat little leather-covered box, and went around merely pressing a button, and getting dozens of pictures by no other means, I immediately decided that I, too, must have a camera.
Lester's was not an expensive one. His father had found it in one of the photographic establishments in Philadelphia, and being of a slightly scientific turn of mind himself, had purchased it and brought it home to Lester. The latter fitted up a corner of the cellar as a dark-room, and straightway launched himself as an amateur photographer.