"There’s the light starting up in the lighthouse near the bar," said Dab Richards.
Yes, Toby Tolman, keeper of the light at the harbour’s mouth, and not far from a dangerous bar, ever changing and yet never going, had kindled a star in the tall lantern as the western clouds dropped their gay extinguisher on the sun’s dwindling candle. Between the boys and the outside, dusky surface of ocean water stretched a line of whitest foam, where the waves broke on the bar.
"Getting chilly," said Dave. "Hadn’t we better go into the cabin and light our lantern?"
"Guess Dick is looking after that," said Jimmy.
No; Dick was looking after--meddling, rather, with something else. He had whispered to John Richards, "Come here, John," and then led him to the bow of the vessel.
"Wouldn’t it be nice to see this old ark move?"
"Oh, I’ve got tired of seeing it in one place."
"Why, just have it go on a little voyage, you know."
"Understand? No," replied John good-naturedly. "Don’t see how we can have a voyage without sails, and the masts are bare as bean-poles when there ain’t any beans on ’em."
"Oh, you’re thick-headed. Don’t you see this anchor?"
"Don’t see any. I suppose there is one somewhere--covered up, you know, down on the bed of the river."
"Only water covers it, and it could be raised, and we could have a sail without any sails."
"Come on!" said John, who was the very boy for any kind of an adventure. "But," he prudently added, "how could we stop?"
"Drop the anchor again. Why, we could stop any time."
"We could sail, say a hundred feet to-night--tide would drift us down--and then we could drop anchor; and to-morrow, when the tide ran up river, we could sail back again and drop anchor, just where we were before."
"We could keep a-going, couldn’t we, Dickie?"
"Certainly. I don’t know but we could go quarter of a mile and then back again. We should have, of course, to go with the tide; but the anchor would regulate us."
"So we could. Just the thing. Let’s try it. Shall I tell the fellers?"
"No; they are quarrelling about something, and they won’t notice anything we do here."
"Johnny, I believe you have lost your mind since coming here. What is this I have got my hand on?"
Dick here laid his hand on a battered old capstan, around which how many hardy seamen had tramped singing "Reuben Ranzo" or some other roaring song of the sea.