"Look there, Hopeton!" Hopeton fixed his glass upon the mist, where Barry pointed.
"You're right! There is something, and there are two of them." "Give the Pilot the glass, Hopeton," said Neil.

"He's got a good eye." "There are two ships, boys, as I'm a sinner, but what they are, I don't know," cried Barry in a voice tense with excitement.

"Here, Neil, take the glass.

You know about ships." Long and earnestly, Captain Neil held the glass in the direction indicated.
"Boys, by all that's holy, they're destroyers," he said at length in a low voice.
Even as they gazed, the two black dots rapidly took shape, growing out of the mist into two sea monsters, all head and shoulders, boring through the seas, each flinging high a huge comb of white spray, and with an indescribable suggestion of arrogant, resistless power, bearing down upon the ship at furious speed.
"Destroyers!" shouted Captain Neil, in a voice that rang through the ship.

"By gad, destroyers!" There was no question of friend or foe; only Great Britain's navy rode over those seas immune.
Upon every hand the word was caught up and passed along.