surprise.

"I knew I were," said Bill Moody in a bragging sort of way. "I think I
can see a hole in a ladder as well as most people; and if that ain't
land, why, I'll eat it."

"There, that will do," interposed the captain to stop any further
remarks, while he proceeded to inspect the hazy object with keen
attention for some minutes, after which he replaced his glass in his
pocket and prepared to descend to the deck again.

"Keep a sharp look-out," he said to Moody as he disappeared over the
side of the top, "and sing out, as soon as we get any nearer, whether
you can see a line of breakers at the foot of the island; for island it
is, sure enough!"

"Aye, aye," grunted out the man; and Captain Dinks went down the rigging
even more carefully than he had ascended, finding great difficulty in
preventing his unaccustomed feet from slipping off the ratlines, which
were like rungs of the smoothest and most polished ice.

"You were right, and I was wrong," he said to Mr Meldrum, as soon as he
had regained the poop. "There is land in sight, sure enough, although I
can at present only see it faintly towards the north-east. It must be,
as you say, either the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land, for there's
nothing else between us and the Australian continent, as we haven't yet
got quite so far south as the Antarctic regions."

"It's probably Kerguelen Land," observed Mr Meldrum, "for you couldn't
see the Crozets nearly so far off; but I hope there's not going to be
another change of the weather. It seems clouding over again."

"Not before we get an observation, I trust," replied the captain; "I
don't like knocking about any longer without knowing where I am."

"Nor I, sorr," put in the first mate heartily. "Sure it's like goin' in
the dark to Bandon Fair, for all the worruld over."

"It's not what we like," interposed Mr Meldrum somewhat dryly. "We
have got to put up with what we can get."

"True for you, sorr," said Mr McCarthy, not to be beaten; "sure, but
isn't it best to make the best on it."

"That's incontestable," replied Mr Meldrum with a laugh; and there the
conversation ended, Kate and her father going below to breakfast.

The weather got thicker, with the wind coming in gusts and now and then
shifting a bit, so that the solitary mizzen-topsail of the _Nancy Bell_
had now again to be close reefed, and her course directed more towards
the land, which they did not seem to near so rapidly as they had though