"Oh, after them, Josie!" Florence cried.
In a moment, the car shot forward. The horn clamored again. The fleeing horses looked back, then leaped to new speed before the monster that threatened them with unknown terrors. As the car increased its pace, the ponies strove the harder. Their strides lengthened, quickened. The stunted marsh grass beat on the low bellies. Despite their desperate striving, the runabout drew closer and closer, reached abreast of them. The excitement of the chase was in the sparkling eyes of the girls. The dog, scrambling up and falling in its seat, yelped madly. Here, the beach broadened to a sharper ascent of the ridge. Josephine shifted the wheel. The car swung in a wide curve and drove straight toward the panic-stricken troop, as if it would soar up to them. Fear took pride's place in the leader's heart. He sounded a command. The flying drove veered, vanished from the ridge top. The muffled thudding of hoofs came faintly for a minute against the sea wind. Then, as the car came to a standstill, the girls listened, but heard no sound.
"It was bully fun!" Josephine said. "I'm sorry it's over."
"After that run, they may be thirsty enough to dig for water," Florence suggested, with a laugh. "Let's climb up, and take a look round from the ridge."
But a glance from this point of advantage made it clear that the peculiarities of the ponies in drinking or fishing were not to be explained to-day. They were visible still, to be sure, but a mile off, and the rapidity with which the moving mass diminished to the eye was proof that they were still in panic.
"We might as well get back to the yacht," was Josephine's rueful comment. "There's not another single thing to see, now they're gone." She ran her keen gaze over the dreary waste of the island with a little shiver of distaste. Then her glance roved the undulant expanse of sea. She uttered a sharp ejaculation of surprise.
"There is something, after all," she called out, excitedly. "See--over there!"
Florence looked in the direction marked by the pointing finger.
"It's a canoe," she hazarded, as her eyes fell on the object that bobbed lightly in the surf, two hundred yards from the shore. "I can see the man in it. He's lying down. Funny!"
But Josephine, wiser from much experience on shipboard, now saw clearly, and the sight thrilled.
"It's a life-raft," she declared, with a tremor in her voice; "and there's a man on it. It's a--real--castaway. Come!"