By an oversight, the lemons had been left in the boat.  Binny Wallace volunteered to go for them.

“Put an extra stone on the painter, Binny,” said Adams, calling after him; “it would be awkward to have the Dolphin give us the slip and return to port minus her passengers.”

“That it would,” answered Binny, scrambling down the rocks.

Sandpeep Island is diamond-shaped—­one point running out into the sea, and the other looking towards the town.  Our tent was on the river-side.  Though the Dolphin was also on the same side, it lay out of sight by the beach at the farther extremity of the island.

Binny Wallace had been absent five or six minutes, when we heard him calling our several names in tones that indicated distress or surprise, we could not tell which.  Our first thought was, “The boat has broken adrift!”

We sprung to our feet and hastened down to the beach.  On turning the bluff which hid the mooring-place from our view, we found the conjecture correct.  Not only was the Dolphin afloat, but poor little Binny Wallace was standing in the bows with his arms stretched helplessly towards us—­drifting out to sea!

“Head the boat in shore!” shouted Phil Adams.

Wallace ran to the tiller; but the slight cockle-shell merely swung round and drifted broadside on.  O, if we had but left a single scull in the Dolphin!

“Can you swim it?” cried Adams, desperately, using his hand as a speaking-trumpet, for the distance between the boat and the island widened momentarily.

Binny Wallace looked down at the sea, which was covered with white caps, and made a despairing gesture.  He knew, and we knew, that the stoutest swimmer could not live forty seconds in those angry waters.

A wild, insane light came into Phil Adams’s eyes, as he stood knee-deep in the boiling surf, and for an instant I think he meditated plunging into the ocean after the receding boat.

The sky darkened, and an ugly look stole rapidly over the broken surface of the sea.

Binny Wallace half rose from his seat in the stem, and waved his hand to us in token of farewell.  In spite of the distance, increasing every instant we could see his face plainly.  The anxious expression it wore at first had passed.  It was pale and meek now, and I love to think there was a kind of halo about it, like that which painters place around the forehead of a saint.  So he drifted away.

The sky grew darker and darker.  It was only by straining our eyes through the unnatural twilight that we could keep the Dolphin in sight.  The figure of Binny Wallace was no longer visible, for the boat itself had dwindled to a mere white dot on the black water.  Now we lost it, and our hearts stopped throbbing; and now the speck appeared again, for an instant, on the crest of a high wave.

Finally, it went out like a spark, and we saw it no more.  Then we gazed at each other, and dared not speak.