"What bad sight you landsmen have, to be sure! Can't you see that she is a barque and is steering straight for the bay.

What other vessel, I should like to know, would be coming here of that description, save the old skipper's ship!" Fritz made no reply to this unanswerable logic; so, he asked another question instead.
"What time do you think she'll be near enough to send a boat off, eh, brother?
We can't go out to meet her, now, you know." "No, worse luck!" said Eric.

"However, I think, with this breeze, she'll be close to us in a couple of hours' time." "A couple of hours!" exclaimed Fritz with dismay, the interval, in his present excited state of feeling, appearing like an eternity! "Yes; but, the time will soon pass in watching her," replied the sailor lad.

"Look how she rises! There, can't you now see her hull above the waves ?" Fritz gazed till his eyes were almost blinded, the sun being right in his face when he looked in the direction of the advancing vessel; but, to his inexperienced eyes, she still seemed as far off as ever.
"I dare say you are right, Eric," he said; "still, I cannot see her hull yet--nor anything indeed but the same little tiny speck I noticed at first! However," he added, drawing a deep sigh, "if we only wait patiently, I suppose she'll arrive in time." "Everything comes to him who knows how to wait," replied his brother, rather grandiloquently; after which speech the two continued to look out over the shimmering expanse of water, now lit up by the rays of the steadily rising sun, without interchanging another word.

Their thoughts were too full for speech.
Some two hours later, the _Pilot's Bride_--for it was that vessel, Eric's instinct not having misled him--backed her main-topsail and lay- to off the entrance to the little bay, the gaudy American flag being run up as she came to the wind, and a gun fired.
The brother crusoes were almost mad in their eagerness to get on board.
"What a pity we have no boat!" they both exclaimed together.
They looked as if they could have plunged into the sea, ready dressed as they were, so as to swim off to the welcome vessel! Eric waved his handkerchief frantically to and fro.
"The skipper will soon know that something has prevented our coming off, and will send in a boat," he said; and the two then waited impatiently for the next act of the stirring nautical drama in which they had so deep an interest.
In a few minutes, they could see a boat lowered from the side of the ship; and, presently, this was pulled towards the shore by four oarsmen, while another individual, whom Eric readily recognised in the distance as Captain Brown, sat in the stern-sheets, steering the little craft in whaling fashion with another oar.
"It's the good old skipper!" exclaimed Eric, dancing about and waving his hat round his head so wildly that it seemed as if he had taken leave of his senses.