Chapter Twenty Three.

Chapter Twenty Three.A Sea-Fog.“Now,” said Bob to himself, when he got down to the beach after a sharp run across the common, “I must be as spry as possible with my swim, or else I shall be too late for the boat, as dad said I would be, for I really haven’t got much time to spare!”Unfortunately, however, at the very outset, poor Bob met with obstacles that prevented this praiseworthy intention being effectively carried out. In the first place, Dick, with whom he had always bathed in company since their first involuntary dip together off the castle rampart on the first evening of their arrival at Southsea, was not at their usual trysting-place. Not only that, he was nowhere to be seen in the neighbourhood of the shore.“I wonder where he can be?” said Bob, continuing his soliloquy in a very disjointed frame of mind, after looking in every direction fruitlessly, and calling out Dick’s name in vain. “I wonder where he can be? The Captain did not say he wasn’t to come with us this morning!”At last, after wasting some precious minutes thus waiting, he began undressing very slowly, instead of in the usual brisk manner in which he was in the habit of peeling off his clothes, running a race with Dick to see who would get into the water first.Then, at length, he plunged in to take his swim in a very half-hearted fashion, going in reluctantly and coming out in the same undecided way; while, to make matters worse and further protract his loitering, just as he was beginning to dress again, a nasty spiteful bloodhound, which was prowling by the shore, made a most unprovoked attack on Rover, necessitating his going to his rescue with a big stone—Master Bob hopping up to the scene of action “with one shoe off and one shoe on,” like the celebrated “John” the hero of the nursery rhyme!Rover was not quite a match for the brute that assailed him; but with Bob’s help, not omitting the big stone, the two “routed the enemy with great slaughter,” the bloodhound fleeing away ignominiously with his tail between his legs, and Rover raising a paean of victory in the shape of a defiant bark as he retreated.Still, the episode consumed a few more minutes of valuable time; so when Bob had hopped back again to where he had left his clothes to complete his toilet, and then raced down to the pier, it was not only past the hour fixed for the Southampton steamer to start, but she was already well on her way.In fact, she was just then rounding Gillkicker Point, which juts out from Stokes Bay, bearing away on board her, his father and mother and Nell, besides the Captain and Mrs Gilmour; and not only that, leaving him behind!Bob did not know how to contain himself.He was too manly to cry; although he felt a big lump in his throat which made him take several short swallows without gulping anything down; while, strangely enough, something seemed to get in his eyes, for a moment preventing him from seeing anything seaward but assort of hazy mist as he stood listlessly by the head of the pier, trying vainly to discern the excursion-boat, now fast disappearing in the distance!Presently, however, after remaining there awhile, staring at nothing, the Captain’s favourite maxim occurred to his mind— “What’s done can’t be helped”; and coming to the conclusion that there was no use in his stopping on the pier any longer, since the steamer had left, and there was no possibility of his being able to join the others, he determined to bend his steps in the direction of the coastguard-station, with the hope of finding Hellyer there to cheer his drooping spirits.Bob’s fates, though, appeared singularly unpropitious for him this morning; for on his arriving anon at the little cabin beyond the castle, which was the Captain’s regular trysting-place, lo, and behold, a strange man was there, who told him that Hellyer was “off duty,” and it would not be his turn “on” again until late in the afternoon. Here was another misfortune!But there was “balm in Gilead” in store for Bob; for, hardly had the long face that he pulled on learning the unwelcome news of Hellyer’s absence merged again into the ordinary round contour with which his friends were familiar, than, whom should he see coming along the beach, only a little way off, but—who should you think? Why, Dick!Yes, he had been into Portsmouth, he explained, to take a letter to the Dockyard for the Captain; and now, also in pursuance of the old sailor’s orders, he was about going off to the cutter, which lay at her moorings abreast of the coastguard-station, and only about a cable’s length out, so as to be within easy reach, so that they could haul her up on the shingle in the event of any sudden shifting wind rendering her anchorage unsafe.Bob at once flew to him with open arms, so to speak; and so did Rover too, the sagacious animal always reflecting his young master’s moods, and having turned as woebegone as a naturally cheerful dog could be since he noticed Bob’s being mopey, he had now resumed his proper tone of bark and mien, wagging his tail at the sight of Dick and thus reciprocating Bob’s feelings.“Hullo, Dick!” said the latter, when the young yachtsman had approached near enough for them to speak without getting to each other. “What are you going to do aboard?”“To clean out the yacht ready for another trip, Master Bob. The Cap’en told me to get her done afore he come back.”“That’s jolly!” exclaimed Bob, brightening up at the prospect of some sort or any sort of expedition in lieu of the one he had missed. “May I come with you?”“Ees, sure-ly, Master Bob,” returned Dick. “But how comes it you bain’t a-gone wi’ the Cap’en and t’others?”Bob did not like any allusion to this delicate subject.“I was too late,” he said abruptly, changing the conversation at once. “How are you going off to the cutter, I see she has got the dinghy towing behind, eh?”“P’r’aps I’m a-going to swim out to her,” replied Dick, with a grin. “What say you to that, Master Bob, hey?”“If you do, I will too,” retorted Bob; “although I’ve had my dip already, and very lonesome it was. Why didn’t you come down this morning?”“I sang out to you jist now, sir, as how I had to take a letter for the Cap’en, who told me as he didn’t think you’d have time to bathe afore starting for the steamer.”“I thought I had—and missed it!” said Bob ruefully. “But you’re not going really to swim out to the cutter now, Dick, eh?”“No, no, Master Bob,” cried Dick, his grin expanding into a laugh. “I were only a-joking. There’s a waterman just shoving down his wherry as will put us off to her. Hi, ahoy, there!”“Hi, hullo!” also shouted out Bob; but the two only succeeded in ultimately attracting the attention of old Barney the boatman, who was rather deaf, and required a deal of hallooing before noticing any one, by setting on Rover with a “Hi, catch him, sir!”This rather exasperated old Barney at first. However, after some violent explanations they were grudgingly given a passage out to the anchored yacht, Barney grumbling at doing it for nothing!Rover was not included in the bargain; for, he disdained adventuring his valuable person in a small row-boat, no inducement being ever strong enough to persuade him so to do. He was quite satisfied to swim out after the boys had started off in the wherry, being lugged subsequently on board the cutter by his legs and tail as soon as they fetched alongside.For some little time after Bob and Dick got on board, both were very busy, Bob dipping overboard a bucket that had a “becket” of rope for a handle, and a longer rope bent on to this with which he proceeded to haul the bucket up again, full of sea-water, wherewith he sluiced the decks fore and aft thoroughly; while Dick, on his part, scrubbed the planks with a piece of “holystone,” then adroitly drying them with a mop, which he could twirl now, after a little experience, with all the dexterity of an old salt!When the little cutter was thus presently made “a-taunto” by their mutual exertions, they sat down to rest for awhile, Dick sharing his luncheon of bread-and-cheese with Bob, who, of course, had long since consumed the slices of bread-and-butter he had brought out with him for his breakfast.By and by, on a gentle breeze springing up from the southward and westward, Master Bob, boylike, suggested their slipping theZephyr’smoorings and going for a little sail out into the offing.“We needn’t run very far,” he said. “Say, only to the fort there and back again, you know.”But Dick would not hear of the proposal.“No, Master Bob, not lest the Cap’en gived orders,” he remonstrated. “Why, he’d turn me off if I did it; and, he’s that kind to me as I wouldn’t like to vex him, no not for nothing!”“He wouldn’t mind me though,” argued Bob. “Didn’t he say the other day—why, you heard him tell Hellyer yourself—that he’d back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?”“Ees, I heerd him,” reluctantly assented the other; “but that didn’t mean fur us to go out in the boat alone.”“Well, Dick, I didn’t think you were a coward!” said Bob with great contempt, angry at being thwarted. “I really didn’t.”This cut the other to the heart.“You doesn’t mean that, Master Bob,” he exclaimed reproachfully, hesitating to utter his scathing reply. “Ah, you didn’t say as I wer’ a coward that time as I jumped into the water arter you behind the castle.”“Forgive me, Dick,” cried Bob impulsively, “I was a beast to say such a thing! Of course, I know you are not a coward; but, really, I’m sure the Captain would not mind a bit our going for a sail—especially if he knew, and he does know, about my being left behind all alone while they all have gone off to Southampton in the steamer enjoying themselves!”This last appeal made Dick hesitate; and, in hesitating thus, he lost his firmness of resolution.“Well, Master Bob, if we only goes a little ways and you promises fur to come back afore the tide turns, I don’t mind unmooring for a bit; though, mind, Master Bob, you’ll bear all the blame if the Cap’en says anythink about it!”“Of course I will, Dick, if he does; but I know he won’t say anything. You may make your mind easy on that score!” With these words, Bob sprang forward on the fo’c’s’le and began loosening the jib from its fastenings; while Dick, now that his scruples were overcome, set to work casting off the gaskets of the mainsail, the two boys then manning the halliards with a will, and hoisting the throat of the sail well up.The jib was then set, its sheet being slackened until Dick slipped the buoy marking the yacht’s moorings overboard; when, the tack being hauled aft, and the mainsail peaked, the bows of the cutter paid off and she walked away close-hauled, standing out towards “No Man’s Fort,” on the starboard tack.It was now past midday and the tide was making into the harbour; so that, as the wind from the south-west had got rather slight, veering round to the southwards, the cutter did not gain much of an offing, losing in leeway nearly all she got in beating out to windward.“I vote we let her run off a little towards the Nab,” said Bob, seeing what little progress they made towards the fort; and he, being the steersman, put the helm up, easing off at the same time the sheet of the mainsail; Dick, who was in the bows, attending to the jib. “It’s awful poor fun drifting like this!”“Mind you turns back agen when the tide begins to run out!” premised Dick. “You promised as we wasn’t to go fur!”“All right,” replied Bob, “I won’t forget.”But, now, a strange thing happened.No sooner had the cutter’s bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.“Hi, Rover, come back, sir!” yelled out Bob, at the pitch of his voice—“Rover, come back!”But, the dog, although hitherto always obedient to his young master’s call, paid no attention to it now, turning a deaf ear to all his whistles and shouts and swimming steadily towards the shore.“Poor Rover, he’ll be drownded, sure-ly!” said Dick. “Don’t ’ee think we’d better go arter he, poor chap?”“Not a bit of it!” replied Bob, angry at the dog’s desertion, as he thought it, putting down Rover’s behaviour to some strange dislike on his part to being in the yacht, at all events when she was moving briskly through the water. “He has swum twice as far in the river in London, and I won’t go after him!”Bob, however, brought the little yacht up to the wind again, watching until Rover was seen to emerge from the sea and crawl up on the beach again; when the cutter’s head was allowed to pay off again, and within a couple of hours or so, although neither of the boys took any note of how the time was going, they had not only passed the Nab but were now nearing the Ower’s light-ship.Not till then did Dick become aware how far they had reached out, Portsmouth having long since disappeared and even the forts beginning to show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.“Master Bob, Master Bob!” he cried in consternation, never having been so far out before, even with the Captain. “Do ’ee know where we be now?”“Why, out at sea, to be sure!” said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron’s corsair— “O’er the glad waters of the deep blue sea.”For his soul certainly was, for the moment, quite as “boundless” and his “thoughts as free,” from all consideration, save of the present—“Isn’t it jolly?”“Well, I doesn’t know about that,” replied Dick, looking very glum. “I’m a-thinking of the gitting back; which, wi’ the tide a-setting out from the harbour, won’t be so easy, I knows!”“Nonsense, Dick!” said Bob in his usual off-hand way, though bringing the cutter up to the wind, so as to go about on the other tack. “You’re frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got round more to the south; so we’ll be able to run back to Portsmouth in no time. The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a wind!”However, “Man proposes and God disposes.”The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of running in homewards “in no time,” the cutter, after a time, became becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open Channel again.Dick was the first to notice this.“Look, Master Bob!” he cried. “We aren’t making no headway at all! I don’t see we’re getting any the nearer to the Nab!”“We will, soon,” replied Bob, all hopeful. “It’s only because the breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we’ll pick it up again! I think, Dick, we’d better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away more!”This was done; but, still theZephyrwould not move.She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies swayed her in this direction and that.“I knewed we was doin’ wrong,” remarked Dick presently, after a long silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. “It’s a judgment on us!”“A fiddlestick!” retorted Bob. “We’ll only drift about like this for a short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to Spithead like one o’clock!”“I doesn’t believe that, Master Bob,” said Dick disconsolately, sitting down on a thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an hour. “We should ha’ tuk warnin’, Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what wer’ a-coming and so he swum ashore in time, he did!”“Rover is a faithless creature!” cried Bob hotly. “I’ll give him a good licking when we reach the land again, you see!”“When’ll that be, Master Bob?”“Oh, some time or other before night,” replied he defiantly, but Dick could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of circumstances.They did not pass a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their drooping spirits, Bob and Dick thinking that the wind by and by would affect them, too.But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further and further out to sea.“Hallo, there’s a steamer!” sang out Bob after another protracted silence between the pair. “I see her smoke easily. She’s steering right for us!”“Where?” asked Dick. “I doesn’t see no steamer, Master Bob.”“There!” said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon. “There she is, blowing off her steam, or her funnel smoking, quite plain!”“Lor’, Master Bob!” ejaculated the other, after peering fixedly for a moment where his companion directed him to look. “That arn’t no steam or smoke as ever I seed. It be a cloud, or fog, I knows; or summut o’ that sort, sure-ly, Master Bob!”Bob, however, would not be persuaded of this, persisting that he was right and Dick wrong.“I don’t know where your eyes can be!” he said scornfully. “I’ll bet anything it’s a steamer; or, I never saw one!”But ere another hour had passed over their heads, Dick was proved to be the true prophet; he, the false!The low-lying bank of vapour, which originally resembled the trail of smoke from some passing steam-vessel on her way down Channel, gradually spread itself out along the horizon.It then rose up, like a curtain, from the sea; and, stretching up its clammy heads towards the zenith, widened over the heavens until it shut out the western sun from their gaze, making the still early afternoon seem as night.Creeping over the surface of the sullen water with ghostly footsteps, the mist soon shrouded the boat in its pall-like folds; impregnating the surrounding atmosphere with moisture and making the boys believe it was raining, though never a drop fell.It was only a sea-fog, that was all.But it was accompanied by a dampness that seemed like the hand of Death!

“Now,” said Bob to himself, when he got down to the beach after a sharp run across the common, “I must be as spry as possible with my swim, or else I shall be too late for the boat, as dad said I would be, for I really haven’t got much time to spare!”

Unfortunately, however, at the very outset, poor Bob met with obstacles that prevented this praiseworthy intention being effectively carried out. In the first place, Dick, with whom he had always bathed in company since their first involuntary dip together off the castle rampart on the first evening of their arrival at Southsea, was not at their usual trysting-place. Not only that, he was nowhere to be seen in the neighbourhood of the shore.

“I wonder where he can be?” said Bob, continuing his soliloquy in a very disjointed frame of mind, after looking in every direction fruitlessly, and calling out Dick’s name in vain. “I wonder where he can be? The Captain did not say he wasn’t to come with us this morning!”

At last, after wasting some precious minutes thus waiting, he began undressing very slowly, instead of in the usual brisk manner in which he was in the habit of peeling off his clothes, running a race with Dick to see who would get into the water first.

Then, at length, he plunged in to take his swim in a very half-hearted fashion, going in reluctantly and coming out in the same undecided way; while, to make matters worse and further protract his loitering, just as he was beginning to dress again, a nasty spiteful bloodhound, which was prowling by the shore, made a most unprovoked attack on Rover, necessitating his going to his rescue with a big stone—Master Bob hopping up to the scene of action “with one shoe off and one shoe on,” like the celebrated “John” the hero of the nursery rhyme!

Rover was not quite a match for the brute that assailed him; but with Bob’s help, not omitting the big stone, the two “routed the enemy with great slaughter,” the bloodhound fleeing away ignominiously with his tail between his legs, and Rover raising a paean of victory in the shape of a defiant bark as he retreated.

Still, the episode consumed a few more minutes of valuable time; so when Bob had hopped back again to where he had left his clothes to complete his toilet, and then raced down to the pier, it was not only past the hour fixed for the Southampton steamer to start, but she was already well on her way.

In fact, she was just then rounding Gillkicker Point, which juts out from Stokes Bay, bearing away on board her, his father and mother and Nell, besides the Captain and Mrs Gilmour; and not only that, leaving him behind!

Bob did not know how to contain himself.

He was too manly to cry; although he felt a big lump in his throat which made him take several short swallows without gulping anything down; while, strangely enough, something seemed to get in his eyes, for a moment preventing him from seeing anything seaward but assort of hazy mist as he stood listlessly by the head of the pier, trying vainly to discern the excursion-boat, now fast disappearing in the distance!

Presently, however, after remaining there awhile, staring at nothing, the Captain’s favourite maxim occurred to his mind— “What’s done can’t be helped”; and coming to the conclusion that there was no use in his stopping on the pier any longer, since the steamer had left, and there was no possibility of his being able to join the others, he determined to bend his steps in the direction of the coastguard-station, with the hope of finding Hellyer there to cheer his drooping spirits.

Bob’s fates, though, appeared singularly unpropitious for him this morning; for on his arriving anon at the little cabin beyond the castle, which was the Captain’s regular trysting-place, lo, and behold, a strange man was there, who told him that Hellyer was “off duty,” and it would not be his turn “on” again until late in the afternoon. Here was another misfortune!

But there was “balm in Gilead” in store for Bob; for, hardly had the long face that he pulled on learning the unwelcome news of Hellyer’s absence merged again into the ordinary round contour with which his friends were familiar, than, whom should he see coming along the beach, only a little way off, but—who should you think? Why, Dick!

Yes, he had been into Portsmouth, he explained, to take a letter to the Dockyard for the Captain; and now, also in pursuance of the old sailor’s orders, he was about going off to the cutter, which lay at her moorings abreast of the coastguard-station, and only about a cable’s length out, so as to be within easy reach, so that they could haul her up on the shingle in the event of any sudden shifting wind rendering her anchorage unsafe.

Bob at once flew to him with open arms, so to speak; and so did Rover too, the sagacious animal always reflecting his young master’s moods, and having turned as woebegone as a naturally cheerful dog could be since he noticed Bob’s being mopey, he had now resumed his proper tone of bark and mien, wagging his tail at the sight of Dick and thus reciprocating Bob’s feelings.

“Hullo, Dick!” said the latter, when the young yachtsman had approached near enough for them to speak without getting to each other. “What are you going to do aboard?”

“To clean out the yacht ready for another trip, Master Bob. The Cap’en told me to get her done afore he come back.”

“That’s jolly!” exclaimed Bob, brightening up at the prospect of some sort or any sort of expedition in lieu of the one he had missed. “May I come with you?”

“Ees, sure-ly, Master Bob,” returned Dick. “But how comes it you bain’t a-gone wi’ the Cap’en and t’others?”

Bob did not like any allusion to this delicate subject.

“I was too late,” he said abruptly, changing the conversation at once. “How are you going off to the cutter, I see she has got the dinghy towing behind, eh?”

“P’r’aps I’m a-going to swim out to her,” replied Dick, with a grin. “What say you to that, Master Bob, hey?”

“If you do, I will too,” retorted Bob; “although I’ve had my dip already, and very lonesome it was. Why didn’t you come down this morning?”

“I sang out to you jist now, sir, as how I had to take a letter for the Cap’en, who told me as he didn’t think you’d have time to bathe afore starting for the steamer.”

“I thought I had—and missed it!” said Bob ruefully. “But you’re not going really to swim out to the cutter now, Dick, eh?”

“No, no, Master Bob,” cried Dick, his grin expanding into a laugh. “I were only a-joking. There’s a waterman just shoving down his wherry as will put us off to her. Hi, ahoy, there!”

“Hi, hullo!” also shouted out Bob; but the two only succeeded in ultimately attracting the attention of old Barney the boatman, who was rather deaf, and required a deal of hallooing before noticing any one, by setting on Rover with a “Hi, catch him, sir!”

This rather exasperated old Barney at first. However, after some violent explanations they were grudgingly given a passage out to the anchored yacht, Barney grumbling at doing it for nothing!

Rover was not included in the bargain; for, he disdained adventuring his valuable person in a small row-boat, no inducement being ever strong enough to persuade him so to do. He was quite satisfied to swim out after the boys had started off in the wherry, being lugged subsequently on board the cutter by his legs and tail as soon as they fetched alongside.

For some little time after Bob and Dick got on board, both were very busy, Bob dipping overboard a bucket that had a “becket” of rope for a handle, and a longer rope bent on to this with which he proceeded to haul the bucket up again, full of sea-water, wherewith he sluiced the decks fore and aft thoroughly; while Dick, on his part, scrubbed the planks with a piece of “holystone,” then adroitly drying them with a mop, which he could twirl now, after a little experience, with all the dexterity of an old salt!

When the little cutter was thus presently made “a-taunto” by their mutual exertions, they sat down to rest for awhile, Dick sharing his luncheon of bread-and-cheese with Bob, who, of course, had long since consumed the slices of bread-and-butter he had brought out with him for his breakfast.

By and by, on a gentle breeze springing up from the southward and westward, Master Bob, boylike, suggested their slipping theZephyr’smoorings and going for a little sail out into the offing.

“We needn’t run very far,” he said. “Say, only to the fort there and back again, you know.”

But Dick would not hear of the proposal.

“No, Master Bob, not lest the Cap’en gived orders,” he remonstrated. “Why, he’d turn me off if I did it; and, he’s that kind to me as I wouldn’t like to vex him, no not for nothing!”

“He wouldn’t mind me though,” argued Bob. “Didn’t he say the other day—why, you heard him tell Hellyer yourself—that he’d back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?”

“Ees, I heerd him,” reluctantly assented the other; “but that didn’t mean fur us to go out in the boat alone.”

“Well, Dick, I didn’t think you were a coward!” said Bob with great contempt, angry at being thwarted. “I really didn’t.”

This cut the other to the heart.

“You doesn’t mean that, Master Bob,” he exclaimed reproachfully, hesitating to utter his scathing reply. “Ah, you didn’t say as I wer’ a coward that time as I jumped into the water arter you behind the castle.”

“Forgive me, Dick,” cried Bob impulsively, “I was a beast to say such a thing! Of course, I know you are not a coward; but, really, I’m sure the Captain would not mind a bit our going for a sail—especially if he knew, and he does know, about my being left behind all alone while they all have gone off to Southampton in the steamer enjoying themselves!”

This last appeal made Dick hesitate; and, in hesitating thus, he lost his firmness of resolution.

“Well, Master Bob, if we only goes a little ways and you promises fur to come back afore the tide turns, I don’t mind unmooring for a bit; though, mind, Master Bob, you’ll bear all the blame if the Cap’en says anythink about it!”

“Of course I will, Dick, if he does; but I know he won’t say anything. You may make your mind easy on that score!” With these words, Bob sprang forward on the fo’c’s’le and began loosening the jib from its fastenings; while Dick, now that his scruples were overcome, set to work casting off the gaskets of the mainsail, the two boys then manning the halliards with a will, and hoisting the throat of the sail well up.

The jib was then set, its sheet being slackened until Dick slipped the buoy marking the yacht’s moorings overboard; when, the tack being hauled aft, and the mainsail peaked, the bows of the cutter paid off and she walked away close-hauled, standing out towards “No Man’s Fort,” on the starboard tack.

It was now past midday and the tide was making into the harbour; so that, as the wind from the south-west had got rather slight, veering round to the southwards, the cutter did not gain much of an offing, losing in leeway nearly all she got in beating out to windward.

“I vote we let her run off a little towards the Nab,” said Bob, seeing what little progress they made towards the fort; and he, being the steersman, put the helm up, easing off at the same time the sheet of the mainsail; Dick, who was in the bows, attending to the jib. “It’s awful poor fun drifting like this!”

“Mind you turns back agen when the tide begins to run out!” premised Dick. “You promised as we wasn’t to go fur!”

“All right,” replied Bob, “I won’t forget.”

But, now, a strange thing happened.

No sooner had the cutter’s bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.

“Hi, Rover, come back, sir!” yelled out Bob, at the pitch of his voice—“Rover, come back!”

But, the dog, although hitherto always obedient to his young master’s call, paid no attention to it now, turning a deaf ear to all his whistles and shouts and swimming steadily towards the shore.

“Poor Rover, he’ll be drownded, sure-ly!” said Dick. “Don’t ’ee think we’d better go arter he, poor chap?”

“Not a bit of it!” replied Bob, angry at the dog’s desertion, as he thought it, putting down Rover’s behaviour to some strange dislike on his part to being in the yacht, at all events when she was moving briskly through the water. “He has swum twice as far in the river in London, and I won’t go after him!”

Bob, however, brought the little yacht up to the wind again, watching until Rover was seen to emerge from the sea and crawl up on the beach again; when the cutter’s head was allowed to pay off again, and within a couple of hours or so, although neither of the boys took any note of how the time was going, they had not only passed the Nab but were now nearing the Ower’s light-ship.

Not till then did Dick become aware how far they had reached out, Portsmouth having long since disappeared and even the forts beginning to show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.

“Master Bob, Master Bob!” he cried in consternation, never having been so far out before, even with the Captain. “Do ’ee know where we be now?”

“Why, out at sea, to be sure!” said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron’s corsair— “O’er the glad waters of the deep blue sea.”

For his soul certainly was, for the moment, quite as “boundless” and his “thoughts as free,” from all consideration, save of the present—“Isn’t it jolly?”

“Well, I doesn’t know about that,” replied Dick, looking very glum. “I’m a-thinking of the gitting back; which, wi’ the tide a-setting out from the harbour, won’t be so easy, I knows!”

“Nonsense, Dick!” said Bob in his usual off-hand way, though bringing the cutter up to the wind, so as to go about on the other tack. “You’re frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got round more to the south; so we’ll be able to run back to Portsmouth in no time. The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a wind!”

However, “Man proposes and God disposes.”

The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of running in homewards “in no time,” the cutter, after a time, became becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open Channel again.

Dick was the first to notice this.

“Look, Master Bob!” he cried. “We aren’t making no headway at all! I don’t see we’re getting any the nearer to the Nab!”

“We will, soon,” replied Bob, all hopeful. “It’s only because the breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we’ll pick it up again! I think, Dick, we’d better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away more!”

This was done; but, still theZephyrwould not move.

She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies swayed her in this direction and that.

“I knewed we was doin’ wrong,” remarked Dick presently, after a long silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. “It’s a judgment on us!”

“A fiddlestick!” retorted Bob. “We’ll only drift about like this for a short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to Spithead like one o’clock!”

“I doesn’t believe that, Master Bob,” said Dick disconsolately, sitting down on a thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an hour. “We should ha’ tuk warnin’, Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what wer’ a-coming and so he swum ashore in time, he did!”

“Rover is a faithless creature!” cried Bob hotly. “I’ll give him a good licking when we reach the land again, you see!”

“When’ll that be, Master Bob?”

“Oh, some time or other before night,” replied he defiantly, but Dick could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of circumstances.

They did not pass a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their drooping spirits, Bob and Dick thinking that the wind by and by would affect them, too.

But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further and further out to sea.

“Hallo, there’s a steamer!” sang out Bob after another protracted silence between the pair. “I see her smoke easily. She’s steering right for us!”

“Where?” asked Dick. “I doesn’t see no steamer, Master Bob.”

“There!” said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon. “There she is, blowing off her steam, or her funnel smoking, quite plain!”

“Lor’, Master Bob!” ejaculated the other, after peering fixedly for a moment where his companion directed him to look. “That arn’t no steam or smoke as ever I seed. It be a cloud, or fog, I knows; or summut o’ that sort, sure-ly, Master Bob!”

Bob, however, would not be persuaded of this, persisting that he was right and Dick wrong.

“I don’t know where your eyes can be!” he said scornfully. “I’ll bet anything it’s a steamer; or, I never saw one!”

But ere another hour had passed over their heads, Dick was proved to be the true prophet; he, the false!

The low-lying bank of vapour, which originally resembled the trail of smoke from some passing steam-vessel on her way down Channel, gradually spread itself out along the horizon.

It then rose up, like a curtain, from the sea; and, stretching up its clammy heads towards the zenith, widened over the heavens until it shut out the western sun from their gaze, making the still early afternoon seem as night.

Creeping over the surface of the sullen water with ghostly footsteps, the mist soon shrouded the boat in its pall-like folds; impregnating the surrounding atmosphere with moisture and making the boys believe it was raining, though never a drop fell.

It was only a sea-fog, that was all.

But it was accompanied by a dampness that seemed like the hand of Death!

Chapter Twenty Four.“Ship, ahoy!”“It is the last straw,” says the proverb, “that breaks the camel’s back!”Bob’s courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from betraying the fears he felt.But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip, breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob, whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.“Oh, Dick!” he cried, bursting into a passion of tears, all the more vehement now from his ever having been a manly boy and in the habit of stifling all such displays of emotion, even when severely hurt, as had happened on more than one occasion in a football scrimmage at school, whence he got the name of Stoic amongst his mates. “Oh, Dick, poor Dick! I’m sorry I made you come with me to your death! I wonder what my mother and dad will say, and Nell too, when they come to learn that we are lost?”“Don’t ’ee now, Master Bob, give way like that!” saidDick, the brave lad, forgetting his own sad plight on seeing his unhappy comrade’s alarm and grief. “Cheer up, Master Bob, like a good sort! We bean’t lost yet, ye knows!”“I’m afraid we are, Dick! I’m afraid we are!” sobbed Bob, as the pair of unfortunates got gradually wetter and more miserable, if that were possible; the density of the atmosphere around them increasing so that it seemed as if they were enveloped in a drenching cloud, this mist of the sea being the offspring of the waters, and consequently taking after its humid parent. “Why, we’re miles and miles away from land, and drifting further and further off every moment! Oh, Dick, we’re lost—we’re lost!”“Now, don’t ’ee, Master Bob, don’t ’ee!” cried Dick, folding one of his arms, like a mother, round the other’s neck and drawing him towards him to comfort him. “We ain’t a bit lost yet, I tell ’ee, sure-ly. Why, we ain’t at sea as you says at all. We be ounly in the h’offin’ hereabouts.”This woke up Bob to argument.“Only the offing, you say, Dick?” he replied, with some of his old dogmatism as they drifted on and on, the ebb-tide that was bearing them away on its bosom lapping against the sides of the boat with a melancholy sound, though almost deadened by the oppressiveness of the damp sea-fog. “Do you know how wide the Channel is ‘hereabouts,’ as you say?”“No, Master Bob,” said the other lad humbly. “I doesn’t. I ain’t no scholard, as you knows.”“Then, I’ll tell you,” rejoined Bob triumphantly. “It must be nearly a hundred miles wide here between the French and English coasts!”Dick, however, was not abashed by this broad statement.“That mebbe, Master Bob,” he replied modestly, scratching the back of his neck where one of his damp locks of hair tickled him at the moment. “But, I heard the Cap’en say ounly t’other day as how there was so many ships a-passing up and down as a boat adrift wer’ bound to be sighted!”“But, suppose a hundred ships passed us,” said Bob, who would not be comforted, in spite of all Dick’s efforts. “Why, old chap, they couldn’t see us! The fog would prevent them!”“Lor’, so her would!” assented Dick, unable to gainsay this argument. “I forgets that, I did, sure-ly!”After a time, Bob’s sobs ceased and he began to think of something else; something that affected him, for the moment, even more strongly than his fears.“I’m awfully hungry, Dick,” he said. “Have you got any more bread-and-cheese left?”“No, not a scrap,” was the melancholy answer. “I giv’ yer half, share and share alike; and I’ve ate every crumb o’ mine!”“Isn’t there anything in the locker?”“Nothing, but the Cap’en’s hatchet! Don’t you bear in mind as how I scrubbed her out afore we started?”“Yes, so you did, I recollect,” replied Bob moodily, his appetite being well-nigh unbearable from its insatiable gnawing. “How do you feel, Dick?”“I feels as if I could eat the h’elephant we seed in the circus.”This made Bob laugh hysterically.“I think I could, too,” he said, between his paroxysms of laughter and sobs. “I never felt so hungry in my life before!”Another interval of silence followed this confession.“I’ll tell ’ee what, Master Bob,” observed Dick, on their comparing notes again presently, when both acknowledged to being cold and wet and miserable. “Let us crawl into the cabin and lie down, hey? It’ll be warmer than here, sure-ly!”“So it will,” cried Bob, getting up and stretching his limbs, which were stiff with cramp from sitting so long in the damp air; the fog around them appearing to get all the thicker as the time passed. “I wonder neither of us thought of that before?”The two then crept in under the half-deck; and, covering themselves up with the cutter’s gaff-topsail, which had been placed within the cabin along with some spare canvas, dropped off into a sound slumber, forgetting their sad plight and their hunger alike, in sleep, the yacht meanwhile still floating along, down Channel, in a west-by-north direction with the ebb.Their rest did not last long.Bob was suddenly awakened from a dream of a wonderful banquet, which he was enjoying, by a sort of rushing gurgling sound; while the boat rocked to and fro at the same time uneasily.Rubbing his eyes, he started up and listened for a moment.Then, he shook Dick to arouse him.“Hullo! Wake up!” he cried. “The wind has sprung up again; and, I think, we’re moving through the water!”“I’ll soon find out,” said Dick, going outside and putting his hand over the gunwale, calling out the instant afterwards, “You’re right, Master Bob! We be moving, right enough. Aye, so we be, sure-ly!”“I wonder where Portsmouth is?” remarked Bob, as the two cogitated what was best to be done, their hopes rising with the welcome breeze; although this was only very feeble as yet, not being sufficient, indeed, to blow away the fog that still hung over the sea.“If we only knew whereabouts we was we’d know where to steer; but we’ve turned about sich a lot, that I’d be puzzled to tell.”“So would I,” agreed Bob. “But, I tell you what I think. Let us run before the wind. It’ll be sure to bring us somewhere, at all events, in the end!”“Aye, that it would, sure-ly, Master Bob,” cried Dick, surprised at the other’s cleverness. “I declare I never as much as thought o’ that!”Thereupon, they wore the little cutter round, she having been previously going like a crab sideways, which fully accounted for the lively motion that had aroused them; and, Bob having stationed himself at the helm, which he had put hard over, Dick mounted up on the fo’c’s’le to act as look-out, in case they should run against anything in the semi-darkness around them, or, more happily still, come in sight of land.They had not long occupied their respective positions, when Bob’s attention was attracted by a cry of alarm from his companion in the bows.“Lawks a mussy!” yelled out Dick in accents of unfeigned terror. “I sees a white ghostess a-flying down on us, with big wings like a h’angel!”“Nonsense, Dick!” cried Bob from aft, trying to peer ahead under the belly of the sail as he was sitting to leeward. “There are no such things as ghosts; and, besides, I don’t see anything at all but the fog and the water!”“Oh, lawks, Master Bob!” screamed the frightened Dick in answer to this. “Look t’other side and then you’ll p’r’aps believe me. Look t’other side! Look t’other side! I bees afeered! I bees afeered!”Bob shifted his seat to windward, so as to get a better view forwards and see what had alarmed Dick.“Why, Dick, it’s a ship!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight the next instant. “What you thought are angel’s wings are the vessel’s sails, though they are angel’s wings to us!”“Be her a real ship, Master Bob?” asked Dick, having another peep at the suspicious object and still not quite convinced as yet. “Sure-ly?”“Of course she is, I tell you,” cried Bob. “Look out now and let go the jib-sheet as I luff up. I’m going to lay-to, for the ship is coming up with us rapidly and will run us down if we don’t take care!”She was diminishing the distance between them quickly enough.A big ship she looked, too, appearing all the larger from the intervening veil of mist, which magnified her proportions wonderfully, in similar fashion to the “Fata Morgana” seen sometimes in Italian waters.Like as in the same spectral phenomenon, too, this vessel seemed to be gliding towards them without sound or apparent motion.She was a veritable phantom of the deep!There were no lights visible on her, nor did it look as if any one was on the watch.So far as the boys could judge from the ocular evidence before them, there might really not have been a single soul on board.But, whether that was the case or no, on she came steadily towards them bow on, emerging bigger and bigger from the ghostly mist, each movement sensibly affecting her and increasing her size; so that, presently, she became a monster ship.She came too near to be pleasant, however, without sheering either to right or aft.It looked as if she were going to run them down!Bob and Dick’s hopes of a rescue paled before the imminent dread of a collision that now stared them in the face—nay, was close at hand.“Shout, Dick! Shout out with me as loud as you can so as to wake them up on board and make them see us!” cried Bob, letting go the tiller and standing up on top of the stern locker. “Now, all together, Dick! Ship, ahoy! Ship, ahoy!”

“It is the last straw,” says the proverb, “that breaks the camel’s back!”

Bob’s courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from betraying the fears he felt.

But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip, breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob, whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.

“Oh, Dick!” he cried, bursting into a passion of tears, all the more vehement now from his ever having been a manly boy and in the habit of stifling all such displays of emotion, even when severely hurt, as had happened on more than one occasion in a football scrimmage at school, whence he got the name of Stoic amongst his mates. “Oh, Dick, poor Dick! I’m sorry I made you come with me to your death! I wonder what my mother and dad will say, and Nell too, when they come to learn that we are lost?”

“Don’t ’ee now, Master Bob, give way like that!” said

Dick, the brave lad, forgetting his own sad plight on seeing his unhappy comrade’s alarm and grief. “Cheer up, Master Bob, like a good sort! We bean’t lost yet, ye knows!”

“I’m afraid we are, Dick! I’m afraid we are!” sobbed Bob, as the pair of unfortunates got gradually wetter and more miserable, if that were possible; the density of the atmosphere around them increasing so that it seemed as if they were enveloped in a drenching cloud, this mist of the sea being the offspring of the waters, and consequently taking after its humid parent. “Why, we’re miles and miles away from land, and drifting further and further off every moment! Oh, Dick, we’re lost—we’re lost!”

“Now, don’t ’ee, Master Bob, don’t ’ee!” cried Dick, folding one of his arms, like a mother, round the other’s neck and drawing him towards him to comfort him. “We ain’t a bit lost yet, I tell ’ee, sure-ly. Why, we ain’t at sea as you says at all. We be ounly in the h’offin’ hereabouts.”

This woke up Bob to argument.

“Only the offing, you say, Dick?” he replied, with some of his old dogmatism as they drifted on and on, the ebb-tide that was bearing them away on its bosom lapping against the sides of the boat with a melancholy sound, though almost deadened by the oppressiveness of the damp sea-fog. “Do you know how wide the Channel is ‘hereabouts,’ as you say?”

“No, Master Bob,” said the other lad humbly. “I doesn’t. I ain’t no scholard, as you knows.”

“Then, I’ll tell you,” rejoined Bob triumphantly. “It must be nearly a hundred miles wide here between the French and English coasts!”

Dick, however, was not abashed by this broad statement.

“That mebbe, Master Bob,” he replied modestly, scratching the back of his neck where one of his damp locks of hair tickled him at the moment. “But, I heard the Cap’en say ounly t’other day as how there was so many ships a-passing up and down as a boat adrift wer’ bound to be sighted!”

“But, suppose a hundred ships passed us,” said Bob, who would not be comforted, in spite of all Dick’s efforts. “Why, old chap, they couldn’t see us! The fog would prevent them!”

“Lor’, so her would!” assented Dick, unable to gainsay this argument. “I forgets that, I did, sure-ly!”

After a time, Bob’s sobs ceased and he began to think of something else; something that affected him, for the moment, even more strongly than his fears.

“I’m awfully hungry, Dick,” he said. “Have you got any more bread-and-cheese left?”

“No, not a scrap,” was the melancholy answer. “I giv’ yer half, share and share alike; and I’ve ate every crumb o’ mine!”

“Isn’t there anything in the locker?”

“Nothing, but the Cap’en’s hatchet! Don’t you bear in mind as how I scrubbed her out afore we started?”

“Yes, so you did, I recollect,” replied Bob moodily, his appetite being well-nigh unbearable from its insatiable gnawing. “How do you feel, Dick?”

“I feels as if I could eat the h’elephant we seed in the circus.”

This made Bob laugh hysterically.

“I think I could, too,” he said, between his paroxysms of laughter and sobs. “I never felt so hungry in my life before!”

Another interval of silence followed this confession.

“I’ll tell ’ee what, Master Bob,” observed Dick, on their comparing notes again presently, when both acknowledged to being cold and wet and miserable. “Let us crawl into the cabin and lie down, hey? It’ll be warmer than here, sure-ly!”

“So it will,” cried Bob, getting up and stretching his limbs, which were stiff with cramp from sitting so long in the damp air; the fog around them appearing to get all the thicker as the time passed. “I wonder neither of us thought of that before?”

The two then crept in under the half-deck; and, covering themselves up with the cutter’s gaff-topsail, which had been placed within the cabin along with some spare canvas, dropped off into a sound slumber, forgetting their sad plight and their hunger alike, in sleep, the yacht meanwhile still floating along, down Channel, in a west-by-north direction with the ebb.

Their rest did not last long.

Bob was suddenly awakened from a dream of a wonderful banquet, which he was enjoying, by a sort of rushing gurgling sound; while the boat rocked to and fro at the same time uneasily.

Rubbing his eyes, he started up and listened for a moment.

Then, he shook Dick to arouse him.

“Hullo! Wake up!” he cried. “The wind has sprung up again; and, I think, we’re moving through the water!”

“I’ll soon find out,” said Dick, going outside and putting his hand over the gunwale, calling out the instant afterwards, “You’re right, Master Bob! We be moving, right enough. Aye, so we be, sure-ly!”

“I wonder where Portsmouth is?” remarked Bob, as the two cogitated what was best to be done, their hopes rising with the welcome breeze; although this was only very feeble as yet, not being sufficient, indeed, to blow away the fog that still hung over the sea.

“If we only knew whereabouts we was we’d know where to steer; but we’ve turned about sich a lot, that I’d be puzzled to tell.”

“So would I,” agreed Bob. “But, I tell you what I think. Let us run before the wind. It’ll be sure to bring us somewhere, at all events, in the end!”

“Aye, that it would, sure-ly, Master Bob,” cried Dick, surprised at the other’s cleverness. “I declare I never as much as thought o’ that!”

Thereupon, they wore the little cutter round, she having been previously going like a crab sideways, which fully accounted for the lively motion that had aroused them; and, Bob having stationed himself at the helm, which he had put hard over, Dick mounted up on the fo’c’s’le to act as look-out, in case they should run against anything in the semi-darkness around them, or, more happily still, come in sight of land.

They had not long occupied their respective positions, when Bob’s attention was attracted by a cry of alarm from his companion in the bows.

“Lawks a mussy!” yelled out Dick in accents of unfeigned terror. “I sees a white ghostess a-flying down on us, with big wings like a h’angel!”

“Nonsense, Dick!” cried Bob from aft, trying to peer ahead under the belly of the sail as he was sitting to leeward. “There are no such things as ghosts; and, besides, I don’t see anything at all but the fog and the water!”

“Oh, lawks, Master Bob!” screamed the frightened Dick in answer to this. “Look t’other side and then you’ll p’r’aps believe me. Look t’other side! Look t’other side! I bees afeered! I bees afeered!”

Bob shifted his seat to windward, so as to get a better view forwards and see what had alarmed Dick.

“Why, Dick, it’s a ship!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight the next instant. “What you thought are angel’s wings are the vessel’s sails, though they are angel’s wings to us!”

“Be her a real ship, Master Bob?” asked Dick, having another peep at the suspicious object and still not quite convinced as yet. “Sure-ly?”

“Of course she is, I tell you,” cried Bob. “Look out now and let go the jib-sheet as I luff up. I’m going to lay-to, for the ship is coming up with us rapidly and will run us down if we don’t take care!”

She was diminishing the distance between them quickly enough.

A big ship she looked, too, appearing all the larger from the intervening veil of mist, which magnified her proportions wonderfully, in similar fashion to the “Fata Morgana” seen sometimes in Italian waters.

Like as in the same spectral phenomenon, too, this vessel seemed to be gliding towards them without sound or apparent motion.

She was a veritable phantom of the deep!

There were no lights visible on her, nor did it look as if any one was on the watch.

So far as the boys could judge from the ocular evidence before them, there might really not have been a single soul on board.

But, whether that was the case or no, on she came steadily towards them bow on, emerging bigger and bigger from the ghostly mist, each movement sensibly affecting her and increasing her size; so that, presently, she became a monster ship.

She came too near to be pleasant, however, without sheering either to right or aft.

It looked as if she were going to run them down!

Bob and Dick’s hopes of a rescue paled before the imminent dread of a collision that now stared them in the face—nay, was close at hand.

“Shout, Dick! Shout out with me as loud as you can so as to wake them up on board and make them see us!” cried Bob, letting go the tiller and standing up on top of the stern locker. “Now, all together, Dick! Ship, ahoy! Ship, ahoy!”

Chapter Twenty Five.Drifting.“Help, ahoy, look out!” sang out Bob and Dick in chorus, well-nigh paralysed with fright. “Ahoy there, look out ahead!”But, in spite of their cries, the phantom ship, whose proportions became all the more magnified the nearer she approached, rose upon them steadily out of the mist, growing into a gruesome reality each second, her hull towering over the little cutter as she bore down upon her, like a giant above a pigmy!“Help, ahoy, look out there!” they once more shouted frantically. “Help—ahoy!”It was all in vain, though, their shouts and cries being unnoticed.The next moment the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was almost on her beam-ends.Had the vessel caught her midships, she would have at once crushed her like an eggshell; as it was, the fluke of one of her anchors, which was hanging from her bows ready for letting go in case of emergency, the barque being not yet clear of soundings, got foul of the cutter’s rigging, sweeping her mast and boom away, the stays snapping under the strain as if they were packthread.Poor little cutter! She was left a complete wreck and nearly full of water; still rocking to and fro from the violence of the collision, even after the craft that had done all the mischief had again, seemingly, re-transformed herself into a phantom ship and faded away in the mist that hung over the sea, like the creation of a dream!It was a very bad dream, though; and Bob and Dick gave themselves up for lost altogether.Their fate, drifting helplessly about, an hour or so before, hungry and miserable, had seemed desperate enough; but their slight sleep, with the subsequent awakening to the knowledge that the wind had sprung up again and was bearing them once more in some certain direction, had restored their courage and revived their hopes.This courage, too, had became more courageous, this hope more hopeful on the approach of the barque; for, they believed she would take them on board and restore them by and by to their friends, advancing so gallantly as she did towards them, like an angel, so Dick thought.But, now!What were the calamities which they so recently bewailed in comparison with the present?Then, the yacht might have been at the mercy of the mist and tide; but she was still staunch and sound, capable when a breeze blew once more of wafting them home—whereas, now, the little cutter was dismasted and water-logged, nay, even sinking for all they knew!Thus, their present position was a thousandfold more terrible than the one before.But, still, only boys though they were, hope did not yet quite desert them.The indomitable courage of youth triumphed over disaster.For a few seconds neither could speak.However, when the ship had disappeared, going away as silently as she had approached them, they bestirred themselves to see what damage the cutter had sustained.Bob was the first to recall his scattered wits.“Well, they haven’t sunk us, as I was afraid they would, Dick!” said he. “I wonder if any of the planks are really started?”“How can we see, Master Bob?” asked Dick anxiously. “So as to know if she be all right?”“Why, by baling her out,” he answered. “If we lessen the water in her, then we’ll know she’s all right.”“But if the water don’t go down?”“Then,wewill!” replied Bob rather curtly. “Have you got anything to bale her out with?”“Well, Master Bob,” observed Dick, grinning, “fur a young gen’leman as is so sharp, you’ve got a orful bad mem’ry! Don’t ’ee recollect the booket as ye helped me fur to wash down the decks wi’ this very marnin’?”“Dear me, Dick, I declare I quite forgot that!” said Bob, with a laugh, seeing Dick’s grin; for, it was not so dark now in their immediate vicinity, the breeze having lifted the fog slightly from the surface of the water. “Where is the bucket stored?”“In the locker, joost by ’ee,” was Dick’s response, as he waded through the water and came up to his companion. “Stop, I’ll get ’im for ’ee! I’ll have to make a dive fur he, though!”“Have you got it?” inquired Bob, after Dick had groped about for some time, popping his head under water and coming up at intervals for breath. “Have you got it?”“’Ees,” said he at length, lugging out the bucket, “I’ve got ’im!”Then, they set to work, each using it alternately.The exertion did them both good, too, standing up as they were to their middles in water; for, it prevented them shivering with cold as they had before done.Bucketful after bucketful they emptied over the side; and, still they did not appear to decrease the quantity the cutter contained to any appreciable extent, bale they, as they baled, their hardest!Gradually, however, the after-thwart became clear.“Hooray!” exclaimed Bob. “We’re gaining on it.”This inspired them with renewed strength; and, after nearly an hour’s hard work, they had so lessened the water that only a small portion now remained washing about under the bottom boards of the boat, which, recovering all her old buoyancy, floated again with a high freeboard, light as a cork, above the surface of the sea, instead of being level with it as before.“That’s a good job done!” said Dick. “I wish that theer murderin’ shep hadn’t a-bruk our mast; fur, we’d soon been all right!”“While you’re about it, Dick,” said Bob, “you might, just as well, wish she hadn’t carried the mast and boom away with her. I don’t believe they’ve left us anything!”No, the colliding ship had made a “clean sweep” of all their spars and rigging and everything; hardly a rope’s-end remaining attached to the cutter, beyond a part of the mainsheet and a bit of the forestay, which latter was hanging down from the bowsprit, the only spar the yacht had left.Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder smashed.Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.It is true, there was the old gaff-topsail still in the fore-peak, as well as a spare jib; but they had nothing to spread them out to the wind with, or affix them to.They were, in fact, oar-less, sail-less, helpless!“I don’t see what we can do,” said Bob, when they had looked over all the boat, in case something perchance might have escaped their notice. “We can only hope and pray!”“Aye, do ’ee pray, Master Bob,” replied Dick eagerly. “P’r’aps God’ll hear us and send us help!”So, then and there the two boys knelt down together side by side in the battered boat, that drifted about at the mercy of the wind and sea, imploring the aid of Him who heeds those who call upon Him for succour, in no wise refusing them or turning a deaf ear to their prayers!By and by, as if in answer to their earnest supplications, the day dawned; when, the mist, which yet lingered over the water, hanging about here and there in little patches, like so many floating islands, was either swallowed up by the sea or absorbed into the air, as if by magic.Bob and Dick now got some idea as to the points of the compass, even if they were not able to tell precisely where they were; for, as the day advanced, a rosy tinge crept upwards over a far-off quarter of the horizon which they knew instinctively to be the east, the birthplace of all light!This tint, almost like a blush, spread quickly over the sky, reaching away to the north and again south, coming full in both their faces and making them glow.The bright hue then gradually melted into a ruddier tone, which first darkened into purple and red and then rapidly changed to a greenish sort of neutral tone that, after an interval, finally became merged into the pure ultramarine of the zenith; for, the heavens were now as clear as a bell, no mist or fog or cloud obscuring the expanse of the empyrean.A sort of golden vapour then, all of a sudden, flooded the east, which in another second gave place to the red rays of the crimson sun; though the latter did not seem so much to rise, but rather appeared to Bob, who was watching intently the various changes that occurred, to jump in an instant above the sea, glorifying it far and near with its presence and warming it into life,This warmth soon cheered the boys, as the light banished the despondent feelings inseparable, as a rule, from darkness and, beyond that, the death-like stillness around, which had previously added to their fears, was banished by the new stir and movement observable in everything.Previously, the sea had risen and fallen tumidly, as if Father Neptune had been asleep and its monotonous pulsation was caused by his deep, long-drawn breathing; but, now, it crisped and sparkled in the sunshine, whilst its surface was broken by innumerable little wavelets, like curls, that grew into swell-crested billows anon, and, later on still, into great rolling waves as the wind got up—this blowing steadily from the eastwards first and then veering round south, following the course of the orb whose heat gave it being.Nor was inanimate nature only stirring.Grey and silver sea-gulls hovered over the little cutter, all sweeping down curiously every now and then to see what the boys were doing there in that mastless and oar-less boat out on the wide waters; and, presently, a shoal of mackerel rose round about them, so thickly that Dick thought he could scoop up some in the buckets, only the fish were too wary and dived down below the surface the moment he stretched his arm out over the side beyond his reach.A couple of porpoises, too, swam by, playing leap-frog again; and, after these, a much larger monster, which might possibly have been a grampus, though Bob could tell nothing about it, not knowing what it was. The movements of all these, with the constantly-changing appearance of the sea, now blue, now green, now brown, as some cloud shadow passed over it, made up a varied panorama such as neither of the two lads ever saw or thought of before!Ships, also, hove in sight and disappeared on the horizon, their white sails gleaming out in the far-off distance; one moment high in the air as if bound skywards, the next sinking into the curving depths of the sea.Now and again, too, the smoke-wreath of some passing steamer, coasting along more speedily than the sailing craft, would sacrilegiously blot the blue of the heavens!But, all the while, though the distant ships might sail along to their haven, and the steamers shape shorter courses to their port independent of wind and tide alike, the poor dismasted, dismantled little yacht was the sport of all alike; first setting down Channel with the ebb, as if going out on a cruise into the wide Atlantic, and then again up Channel with the flood towards Dover.The boat was ever drifting and tossed about ever, like a battered shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn, and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every twenty-four hours, trying fruitlessly to soothe the differences of the quarrelsome quartette!

“Help, ahoy, look out!” sang out Bob and Dick in chorus, well-nigh paralysed with fright. “Ahoy there, look out ahead!”

But, in spite of their cries, the phantom ship, whose proportions became all the more magnified the nearer she approached, rose upon them steadily out of the mist, growing into a gruesome reality each second, her hull towering over the little cutter as she bore down upon her, like a giant above a pigmy!

“Help, ahoy, look out there!” they once more shouted frantically. “Help—ahoy!”

It was all in vain, though, their shouts and cries being unnoticed.

The next moment the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was almost on her beam-ends.

Had the vessel caught her midships, she would have at once crushed her like an eggshell; as it was, the fluke of one of her anchors, which was hanging from her bows ready for letting go in case of emergency, the barque being not yet clear of soundings, got foul of the cutter’s rigging, sweeping her mast and boom away, the stays snapping under the strain as if they were packthread.

Poor little cutter! She was left a complete wreck and nearly full of water; still rocking to and fro from the violence of the collision, even after the craft that had done all the mischief had again, seemingly, re-transformed herself into a phantom ship and faded away in the mist that hung over the sea, like the creation of a dream!

It was a very bad dream, though; and Bob and Dick gave themselves up for lost altogether.

Their fate, drifting helplessly about, an hour or so before, hungry and miserable, had seemed desperate enough; but their slight sleep, with the subsequent awakening to the knowledge that the wind had sprung up again and was bearing them once more in some certain direction, had restored their courage and revived their hopes.

This courage, too, had became more courageous, this hope more hopeful on the approach of the barque; for, they believed she would take them on board and restore them by and by to their friends, advancing so gallantly as she did towards them, like an angel, so Dick thought.

But, now!

What were the calamities which they so recently bewailed in comparison with the present?

Then, the yacht might have been at the mercy of the mist and tide; but she was still staunch and sound, capable when a breeze blew once more of wafting them home—whereas, now, the little cutter was dismasted and water-logged, nay, even sinking for all they knew!

Thus, their present position was a thousandfold more terrible than the one before.

But, still, only boys though they were, hope did not yet quite desert them.

The indomitable courage of youth triumphed over disaster.

For a few seconds neither could speak.

However, when the ship had disappeared, going away as silently as she had approached them, they bestirred themselves to see what damage the cutter had sustained.

Bob was the first to recall his scattered wits.

“Well, they haven’t sunk us, as I was afraid they would, Dick!” said he. “I wonder if any of the planks are really started?”

“How can we see, Master Bob?” asked Dick anxiously. “So as to know if she be all right?”

“Why, by baling her out,” he answered. “If we lessen the water in her, then we’ll know she’s all right.”

“But if the water don’t go down?”

“Then,wewill!” replied Bob rather curtly. “Have you got anything to bale her out with?”

“Well, Master Bob,” observed Dick, grinning, “fur a young gen’leman as is so sharp, you’ve got a orful bad mem’ry! Don’t ’ee recollect the booket as ye helped me fur to wash down the decks wi’ this very marnin’?”

“Dear me, Dick, I declare I quite forgot that!” said Bob, with a laugh, seeing Dick’s grin; for, it was not so dark now in their immediate vicinity, the breeze having lifted the fog slightly from the surface of the water. “Where is the bucket stored?”

“In the locker, joost by ’ee,” was Dick’s response, as he waded through the water and came up to his companion. “Stop, I’ll get ’im for ’ee! I’ll have to make a dive fur he, though!”

“Have you got it?” inquired Bob, after Dick had groped about for some time, popping his head under water and coming up at intervals for breath. “Have you got it?”

“’Ees,” said he at length, lugging out the bucket, “I’ve got ’im!”

Then, they set to work, each using it alternately.

The exertion did them both good, too, standing up as they were to their middles in water; for, it prevented them shivering with cold as they had before done.

Bucketful after bucketful they emptied over the side; and, still they did not appear to decrease the quantity the cutter contained to any appreciable extent, bale they, as they baled, their hardest!

Gradually, however, the after-thwart became clear.

“Hooray!” exclaimed Bob. “We’re gaining on it.”

This inspired them with renewed strength; and, after nearly an hour’s hard work, they had so lessened the water that only a small portion now remained washing about under the bottom boards of the boat, which, recovering all her old buoyancy, floated again with a high freeboard, light as a cork, above the surface of the sea, instead of being level with it as before.

“That’s a good job done!” said Dick. “I wish that theer murderin’ shep hadn’t a-bruk our mast; fur, we’d soon been all right!”

“While you’re about it, Dick,” said Bob, “you might, just as well, wish she hadn’t carried the mast and boom away with her. I don’t believe they’ve left us anything!”

No, the colliding ship had made a “clean sweep” of all their spars and rigging and everything; hardly a rope’s-end remaining attached to the cutter, beyond a part of the mainsheet and a bit of the forestay, which latter was hanging down from the bowsprit, the only spar the yacht had left.

Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder smashed.

Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.

It is true, there was the old gaff-topsail still in the fore-peak, as well as a spare jib; but they had nothing to spread them out to the wind with, or affix them to.

They were, in fact, oar-less, sail-less, helpless!

“I don’t see what we can do,” said Bob, when they had looked over all the boat, in case something perchance might have escaped their notice. “We can only hope and pray!”

“Aye, do ’ee pray, Master Bob,” replied Dick eagerly. “P’r’aps God’ll hear us and send us help!”

So, then and there the two boys knelt down together side by side in the battered boat, that drifted about at the mercy of the wind and sea, imploring the aid of Him who heeds those who call upon Him for succour, in no wise refusing them or turning a deaf ear to their prayers!

By and by, as if in answer to their earnest supplications, the day dawned; when, the mist, which yet lingered over the water, hanging about here and there in little patches, like so many floating islands, was either swallowed up by the sea or absorbed into the air, as if by magic.

Bob and Dick now got some idea as to the points of the compass, even if they were not able to tell precisely where they were; for, as the day advanced, a rosy tinge crept upwards over a far-off quarter of the horizon which they knew instinctively to be the east, the birthplace of all light!

This tint, almost like a blush, spread quickly over the sky, reaching away to the north and again south, coming full in both their faces and making them glow.

The bright hue then gradually melted into a ruddier tone, which first darkened into purple and red and then rapidly changed to a greenish sort of neutral tone that, after an interval, finally became merged into the pure ultramarine of the zenith; for, the heavens were now as clear as a bell, no mist or fog or cloud obscuring the expanse of the empyrean.

A sort of golden vapour then, all of a sudden, flooded the east, which in another second gave place to the red rays of the crimson sun; though the latter did not seem so much to rise, but rather appeared to Bob, who was watching intently the various changes that occurred, to jump in an instant above the sea, glorifying it far and near with its presence and warming it into life,

This warmth soon cheered the boys, as the light banished the despondent feelings inseparable, as a rule, from darkness and, beyond that, the death-like stillness around, which had previously added to their fears, was banished by the new stir and movement observable in everything.

Previously, the sea had risen and fallen tumidly, as if Father Neptune had been asleep and its monotonous pulsation was caused by his deep, long-drawn breathing; but, now, it crisped and sparkled in the sunshine, whilst its surface was broken by innumerable little wavelets, like curls, that grew into swell-crested billows anon, and, later on still, into great rolling waves as the wind got up—this blowing steadily from the eastwards first and then veering round south, following the course of the orb whose heat gave it being.

Nor was inanimate nature only stirring.

Grey and silver sea-gulls hovered over the little cutter, all sweeping down curiously every now and then to see what the boys were doing there in that mastless and oar-less boat out on the wide waters; and, presently, a shoal of mackerel rose round about them, so thickly that Dick thought he could scoop up some in the buckets, only the fish were too wary and dived down below the surface the moment he stretched his arm out over the side beyond his reach.

A couple of porpoises, too, swam by, playing leap-frog again; and, after these, a much larger monster, which might possibly have been a grampus, though Bob could tell nothing about it, not knowing what it was. The movements of all these, with the constantly-changing appearance of the sea, now blue, now green, now brown, as some cloud shadow passed over it, made up a varied panorama such as neither of the two lads ever saw or thought of before!

Ships, also, hove in sight and disappeared on the horizon, their white sails gleaming out in the far-off distance; one moment high in the air as if bound skywards, the next sinking into the curving depths of the sea.

Now and again, too, the smoke-wreath of some passing steamer, coasting along more speedily than the sailing craft, would sacrilegiously blot the blue of the heavens!

But, all the while, though the distant ships might sail along to their haven, and the steamers shape shorter courses to their port independent of wind and tide alike, the poor dismasted, dismantled little yacht was the sport of all alike; first setting down Channel with the ebb, as if going out on a cruise into the wide Atlantic, and then again up Channel with the flood towards Dover.

The boat was ever drifting and tossed about ever, like a battered shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn, and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every twenty-four hours, trying fruitlessly to soothe the differences of the quarrelsome quartette!

Chapter Twenty Six.Despair!“How hot it be, Master Bob!” said Dick, when the sun had climbed so high that he seemed right overhead, sending down his rays vertically and making it so warm that the boys began to perspire, while they were tormented with thirst. “I be parched wi’ drout and could swaller a gallon o’ spring wutter if I hed the chance!”“I say, let us have a swim,” suggested Bob. “I’ve heard it will relieve a person suffering from thirst; and, besides, I believe it will do us both good and freshen us up.”“All right, Master Bob,” said Dick somewhat hesitatingly, in reply to this proposition. “But, ain’t it deep here?”“Deep! What does that matter?” replied Bob lightly. “Why, Dick, you silly fellow, you forget we always used to swim out every morning into deep water. Ah, I forget, I forget! Oh,—mother, my mother!”The poor boy broke down utterly again at this point, it having suddenly flashed across his memory that his former swims from the beach were things of the past; and that he might never see his mother or any of the home folk again.No, never, ah, never again!Dick, however, once more comforted him, ceasing to dwell on his own pangs of thirst; although the lad’s tongue had swollen to such a size that it seemed too big for his mouth, and his lips were all parched and cracked.A little later, when Bob had become more composed again, his idea of a battle was carried out, the boys making use of their solitary rope, the end of the broken forestay that was hanging from the bowsprit, to climb back into the boat after they had had a dip alongside.They were not able to swim far, being incapable of much exertion; but the plunge alone and the immersion in the water while holding to the rope’s-end refreshed them greatly, making them feel stronger, in addition to allaying their burning thirst.Still, when this great longing was quenched, they were tortured with hunger, Dick actually tearing off one of the soles of his boots and setting to work gnawing it.Bob kept up his spirits so far as to make fun of this, chaffing his companion and saying that he preferred the way in which the Captain served up his soles to Dick’s!“Ah,” said the other in reply, “I wonder what the good Cap’en ’ud think if he seed us now?”“Why, that we were two unfortunate fellows!” replied Bob, becoming grave again in an instant. “I’m sure he would pity us from the bottom of his heart!”Thus the long day wore on; although, it seemed as if it would never end!However, when night came round again, they wished they had yet the day; it was so dark, so dreary, so eerie, pitching and rolling about there, carried hither and thither as the tide listed, with never a vista of the wished-for land, with never a sound but the sobbing sea.Yet, it was wonderful how the boys encouraged each other to bear up and be hopeful, in spite of everything.Whenever, in the early morning previously and during the day in their respective sufferings, one or the other grew despondent Dick cheered Bob and Bob cheered Dick, as the case might be.Then, somehow or other, the principal portion of the cheering-up work was borne by Dick; the very brightness and look of everything, even while he noticed them, seeming to have the effect of depressing Bob’s spirits by some unknown association or connection with those at home.At night, however, it was Bob’s turn to sustain the drooping courage of Dick, who, like most country-bred lads, was intensely superstitious, fancying the darkness to swarm with ghosts and goblins, who were on the watch to devour him; the boy, while bearing up bravely against palpable privations and open dangers, staring them in the face, from which grown men would have quailed, was now affected by silly fears which a baby would have blushed to own!All through the wearisome hours of the dragging night, whose minutes were as iron and hours like lead, he was constantly starting up in nervous terror; the moan of the sea, the cry of some belated sea-gull, the plunge of a fish in the water, nay even the creaking of the boat’s own timbers, with each and all of which Dick was perfectly familiar, alike arousing his frenzied alarm.It was, “Lawks, Master Bob! what be this now?” throughout the terrible interval that elapsed between the fading of the twilight on the one day and sunrise on the next. “Lor’, what’s that?”And, that next day!The boys were weaker then, for very nearly eight-and-forty hours had elapsed since they had been on board the cutter; forty-eight hours without food, without any regular sleep, without any real rest even, as their attention was always kept on the alert, while, all the time, the peril they were in was sufficient alone to have crushed their every energy!Hope, undying hope that had kept them up so long, now left them at last. Who could hope against such continual disappointment, with ships all around them sometimes and yet never a one to come near where they floated and drifted and gave way to their despair?Towards the evening of this day Dick got very weak.Strange to say, although brought up in the country and accustomed, probably, all his early life, at any rate, to exposure and hard living, Dick was not able to bear up against their present sufferings by any means so well as Bob, who, on this third night of their being adrift, was yet full of vitality!It was in vain for him, though, to try and reanimate Dick, who, hopeless, and almost helpless, lay down in the bottom of the boat, only asking to be left alone to die.“I’m a-dying, Master Bob,” he gasped out faintly, when Bob tried to raise him up. “Let me be; let me be!”“Dying, nonsense,” repeated Bob, pretending to joke about it; though, truth to say, he felt in little joking mood then, being almost as weak as his companion. “You are worth twenty dead men yet, as the old Captain would say!”But, in spite of all his encouraging words, Dick grew gradually weaker and weaker; until, towards midnight, his breathing became so very faint that Bob could hardly feel it, though kneeling down close beside him and with his face touching that of poor Dick.“I’m a-dying—Master Bob,” he whispered, in such low accents that Bob had to bend down his ear close to his mouth to hear what he said. “I bees—a-dying—Mas-ter—Bob. I knows—I—be! I—hears—the—h’angels—a-flapping on their wings! I knows they be a-coming—for—me! God—bless—’ee, Mas-ter—Bob! Ah, if—’ee—ever—get—’shore—’gain—tell—Cap’—I—didn’t—mean—no—’arm!”Soon after faltering out these broken words, Dick fell back insensible in the bottom of the boat.“Oh, Dick, poor Dick, good Dick!” sobbed out Bob, throwing himself down beside him on the floor of the boat’s little cabin and bursting into an agony of tears. “It is I who have killed you. But for me, you would never have been here at all! Poor, brave Dick, you saved my life, and in return I’ve killed you!”The torture of mind in which he now was on seeing, as he thought, Dick dead before him, coupled with all he had already gone through, but of which he had taken little heed while he had his comrade to console, now coming together affected Bob’s mind.He began to wander in delirium, imagining himself not only safe ashore, but in his London home, amid all the surroundings to which he had been accustomed before coming to Southsea and to this sad extremity.He thought it was Sunday and that he was going to church with his mother and Nell; and that he was late, as usual, and they were calling him to hurry.“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he screamed out in such a shrill voice, attenuated by famine, as hardly to be recognised as human, so shrill that it startled the sea-gulls hovering over the boat. “I’m coming! There’s lots of time, the bells are ringing still! The bells are ringing, I hear them!—Ring—ring—ring—I—hear—I hear—I—”Then he, too, lost consciousness and fell, like a log, insensible, across the body of poor Dick; the far-off bell which he had fancied to be ringing miles and miles distant from where the boat was floating in the Channel, being the last echo that sounded in his ears as he fainted away.But, there was reason in his madness.A bell was ringing; and ringing too realistically not to be real!

“How hot it be, Master Bob!” said Dick, when the sun had climbed so high that he seemed right overhead, sending down his rays vertically and making it so warm that the boys began to perspire, while they were tormented with thirst. “I be parched wi’ drout and could swaller a gallon o’ spring wutter if I hed the chance!”

“I say, let us have a swim,” suggested Bob. “I’ve heard it will relieve a person suffering from thirst; and, besides, I believe it will do us both good and freshen us up.”

“All right, Master Bob,” said Dick somewhat hesitatingly, in reply to this proposition. “But, ain’t it deep here?”

“Deep! What does that matter?” replied Bob lightly. “Why, Dick, you silly fellow, you forget we always used to swim out every morning into deep water. Ah, I forget, I forget! Oh,—mother, my mother!”

The poor boy broke down utterly again at this point, it having suddenly flashed across his memory that his former swims from the beach were things of the past; and that he might never see his mother or any of the home folk again.

No, never, ah, never again!

Dick, however, once more comforted him, ceasing to dwell on his own pangs of thirst; although the lad’s tongue had swollen to such a size that it seemed too big for his mouth, and his lips were all parched and cracked.

A little later, when Bob had become more composed again, his idea of a battle was carried out, the boys making use of their solitary rope, the end of the broken forestay that was hanging from the bowsprit, to climb back into the boat after they had had a dip alongside.

They were not able to swim far, being incapable of much exertion; but the plunge alone and the immersion in the water while holding to the rope’s-end refreshed them greatly, making them feel stronger, in addition to allaying their burning thirst.

Still, when this great longing was quenched, they were tortured with hunger, Dick actually tearing off one of the soles of his boots and setting to work gnawing it.

Bob kept up his spirits so far as to make fun of this, chaffing his companion and saying that he preferred the way in which the Captain served up his soles to Dick’s!

“Ah,” said the other in reply, “I wonder what the good Cap’en ’ud think if he seed us now?”

“Why, that we were two unfortunate fellows!” replied Bob, becoming grave again in an instant. “I’m sure he would pity us from the bottom of his heart!”

Thus the long day wore on; although, it seemed as if it would never end!

However, when night came round again, they wished they had yet the day; it was so dark, so dreary, so eerie, pitching and rolling about there, carried hither and thither as the tide listed, with never a vista of the wished-for land, with never a sound but the sobbing sea.

Yet, it was wonderful how the boys encouraged each other to bear up and be hopeful, in spite of everything.

Whenever, in the early morning previously and during the day in their respective sufferings, one or the other grew despondent Dick cheered Bob and Bob cheered Dick, as the case might be.

Then, somehow or other, the principal portion of the cheering-up work was borne by Dick; the very brightness and look of everything, even while he noticed them, seeming to have the effect of depressing Bob’s spirits by some unknown association or connection with those at home.

At night, however, it was Bob’s turn to sustain the drooping courage of Dick, who, like most country-bred lads, was intensely superstitious, fancying the darkness to swarm with ghosts and goblins, who were on the watch to devour him; the boy, while bearing up bravely against palpable privations and open dangers, staring them in the face, from which grown men would have quailed, was now affected by silly fears which a baby would have blushed to own!

All through the wearisome hours of the dragging night, whose minutes were as iron and hours like lead, he was constantly starting up in nervous terror; the moan of the sea, the cry of some belated sea-gull, the plunge of a fish in the water, nay even the creaking of the boat’s own timbers, with each and all of which Dick was perfectly familiar, alike arousing his frenzied alarm.

It was, “Lawks, Master Bob! what be this now?” throughout the terrible interval that elapsed between the fading of the twilight on the one day and sunrise on the next. “Lor’, what’s that?”

And, that next day!

The boys were weaker then, for very nearly eight-and-forty hours had elapsed since they had been on board the cutter; forty-eight hours without food, without any regular sleep, without any real rest even, as their attention was always kept on the alert, while, all the time, the peril they were in was sufficient alone to have crushed their every energy!

Hope, undying hope that had kept them up so long, now left them at last. Who could hope against such continual disappointment, with ships all around them sometimes and yet never a one to come near where they floated and drifted and gave way to their despair?

Towards the evening of this day Dick got very weak.

Strange to say, although brought up in the country and accustomed, probably, all his early life, at any rate, to exposure and hard living, Dick was not able to bear up against their present sufferings by any means so well as Bob, who, on this third night of their being adrift, was yet full of vitality!

It was in vain for him, though, to try and reanimate Dick, who, hopeless, and almost helpless, lay down in the bottom of the boat, only asking to be left alone to die.

“I’m a-dying, Master Bob,” he gasped out faintly, when Bob tried to raise him up. “Let me be; let me be!”

“Dying, nonsense,” repeated Bob, pretending to joke about it; though, truth to say, he felt in little joking mood then, being almost as weak as his companion. “You are worth twenty dead men yet, as the old Captain would say!”

But, in spite of all his encouraging words, Dick grew gradually weaker and weaker; until, towards midnight, his breathing became so very faint that Bob could hardly feel it, though kneeling down close beside him and with his face touching that of poor Dick.

“I’m a-dying—Master Bob,” he whispered, in such low accents that Bob had to bend down his ear close to his mouth to hear what he said. “I bees—a-dying—Mas-ter—Bob. I knows—I—be! I—hears—the—h’angels—a-flapping on their wings! I knows they be a-coming—for—me! God—bless—’ee, Mas-ter—Bob! Ah, if—’ee—ever—get—’shore—’gain—tell—Cap’—I—didn’t—mean—no—’arm!”

Soon after faltering out these broken words, Dick fell back insensible in the bottom of the boat.

“Oh, Dick, poor Dick, good Dick!” sobbed out Bob, throwing himself down beside him on the floor of the boat’s little cabin and bursting into an agony of tears. “It is I who have killed you. But for me, you would never have been here at all! Poor, brave Dick, you saved my life, and in return I’ve killed you!”

The torture of mind in which he now was on seeing, as he thought, Dick dead before him, coupled with all he had already gone through, but of which he had taken little heed while he had his comrade to console, now coming together affected Bob’s mind.

He began to wander in delirium, imagining himself not only safe ashore, but in his London home, amid all the surroundings to which he had been accustomed before coming to Southsea and to this sad extremity.

He thought it was Sunday and that he was going to church with his mother and Nell; and that he was late, as usual, and they were calling him to hurry.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he screamed out in such a shrill voice, attenuated by famine, as hardly to be recognised as human, so shrill that it startled the sea-gulls hovering over the boat. “I’m coming! There’s lots of time, the bells are ringing still! The bells are ringing, I hear them!—Ring—ring—ring—I—hear—I hear—I—”

Then he, too, lost consciousness and fell, like a log, insensible, across the body of poor Dick; the far-off bell which he had fancied to be ringing miles and miles distant from where the boat was floating in the Channel, being the last echo that sounded in his ears as he fainted away.

But, there was reason in his madness.

A bell was ringing; and ringing too realistically not to be real!

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