the
coast, or down it, they would have been seen to a certainty.

Their pursuers, clustering around the place where the tracks terminated,
were no wiser than ever. Some of them were ready to believe that
drowning had been the fate of the castaways upon their coast, and so
stated it to their companions. But they spoke only conjectures, and in
tones that told them, like the rest, to be under the influence of some
superstitious fear. Despite their confidence in the protection of their
boasted Prophet, they felt a natural dread of that wilderness of waters,
less known to them than the wilderness of sand.

Ere long they withdrew from its presence, and betook themselves back to
their encampment, under a half belief that the three individuals seen
and pursued had either drowned themselves in the great deep, or by some
mysterious means known to these strange men of the sea, had escaped
across its far-reaching waters!

CHAPTER XXXI.

A DOUBLE PREDICAMENT.

Short time as their pursuers had stayed upon the strand, it seemed an
age to the submerged midshipmen.

On first placing themselves in position, they had chosen a spot where,
with their knees resting upon the bottom, they could just hold their
chins above water. This would enable them to hold their ground without
any great difficulty, and for some time they so maintained it.

Soon, however, they began to perceive that the water was rising around
them,--a circumstance easily explained by the influx of the tide. The
rise was slow and gradual: but, for all that, they saw that should they
require to remain in their place of concealment for any length of time,
drowning must be their inevitable destiny.

A means of avoiding this soon presented itself. Inside the line of
breakers, the water shoaled gradually towards the shore. By advancing in
this direction they could still keep to the same depth. This course they
adopted--gliding cautiously forward upon their knees, whenever the tide
admonished them to repeat the manoeuvre.

This state of affairs would have been satisfactory enough, but for a
circumstance that, every moment, was making itself more apparent. At
each move they were not only approaching nearer to their enemies,
scattered along the strand; but as they receded from the line of the
breakers, the water became comparatively tranquil, and its smooth
surface, less confused by the masses of floating foam, was more likely
to betray them to the spectators on t