“No, we’re all right,” said Henry Burns. He went forward and stood looking off eagerly for some sign of light on shore. The island grew black in the twilight, and then was only a vague, indefinite object. They were in great spirits, though,—so they made out,—but it was just a bit dreary for all that, almost drifting down with the tide, and only a few puffs of wind now and then, with not even a light in a fisherman’s cabin showing on that shore. Then, too, the very calmness of the night made sounds more distinct. And just a little to seaward, a mile or two below where the harbour should be, there sounded the heaving of the ground-swell against the reefs that lay about Loon Island so thickly. And the sound of the shattering of a wave as it drops down upon a reef in the night, amid strange waters, is not a cheerful thing to hear. Perhaps it was this doleful, ominous sound more than anything else that somehow took the enthusiasm out of them. It was such an uncertain sound, that subdued crashing upon the reefs. Was it a half-mile away? Was it a mile? Was it near? It was hard to tell. Just how uncertain they did feel, and just how anxious they had grown in the last half-hour of darkness, was best revealed by Henry Burns when, from his watch forward, he said suddenly, but very quietly, “There are the lights, Jack. We’re close in.” It was his manner of expression when he was most deeply affected—a calm, modulated tone that had a world of meaning in it. “A-h-h!” exclaimed Harvey. There was no mistaking the relief in his expression. “I knew they ought to be here, but they were a long time showing.” “Well, I don’t mind saying they could have showed before and suited me better,” said Bob. “Say, those reefs have a creepy, shivery sound in the night, don’t they? I’d rather be in the harbour.” There was a twinkling of lights to guide them now, for a little flotilla of fishing-boats lay snug within, each with its harbour light set; and the lamps in the fishermen’s houses that were here and there straggling along the shores of the large and small island facing the harbour gleamed out from many a kitchen window. They drifted slowly in under the shadow of the hills of Loon Island and entered the little thoroughfare that ran between the two islands, at a quarter to nine o’clock. “We are in luck at the finish, at any rate,” said Henry Burns, presently, picking up the boat-hook. “Jack, there’s a vacant buoy to make fast to.” The buoy, a circular object painted white, showed a little way off the windward bow, and Jack Harvey luffed up to it. Henry Burns caught the mooring; Tom and Bob had the mainsail on the run in a twinkling; and a moment more they were lying safe and snug at their voyage’s end.