Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/101

Rh walked up the path between Captain Saulsby’s bent, old willow trees, a sullen boy who had  sniffed the salt breeze disdainfully and vowed that he did not like it. That was some entirely different person whose name might have happened to be Billy Wentworth, but who had  nothing whatever in common with the boy he  was now. He closed his eyes as he was thinking it over, and even might have dozed a little until a sudden exclamation from the nearest  officer startled him into alert attention. The rapid volley of excited orders that followed told him at once that something unusual must  have occurred, and, forgetting all caution in  his eager interest, he stood upright that he  might watch the better. It seemed as though he saw a looming bulk in the blackness ahead  of them, as though he actually heard a voice  speaking somewhere beyond there in the dark. Then, all in a breath, a myriad of electric lights went on and there sprang into form the  outline of a huge battleship, right across their  bows. She seemed to tower above them like a mountain, enormous, massive, moving at no  very great speed, but inexorably as though  there were no hope of her swerving or checking her course.