ds until the jolly-boat came
back to fetch them; and it really seemed, from the many earnest "good-
byes" exchanged between those starting off and the ones left behind as
if the castaways were parting for ever, the separation seemed to cause
such a wrench after they had been so long together!

Thanks to the fine fresh breeze, and the fact of their being almost in
the open sea now--for the sides of the bay diverged so greatly after a
time that the opposite coasts could not be seen--the boat was under sail
instead of being pulled along; and the motion was ever so much more
pleasant than when it was oscillated to and fro by the sharp jerky
strokes of the rowers.

The weather still continued fine and clear, with the sun shining on the
water and a bright blue sky overhead; and as the boat glided along,
heeling over to the wind every now and then and tossing the spray from
her bows as she came down with a flop on the crest of some little wave
which got in her way, Frank wished that he and Kate could glide on so
for ever. Everything seemed so delightful around them after the dreary
winter they had so recently passed through.

Nature herself was smiling again upon them in the bright summer dawn!

Even the penguins seemed to enjoy the change of season, for they raced
after the boat as she pursued her way, moving through the water like a
shoal of albacore, and rarely showing more than their heads above the
surface for a little while. Then, all of a sudden, as if playing a game
of leapfrog amongst themselves, they would spring out of the sea in long
lines, one after another, showing their steel-grey backs and silvery
sides, so that Kate could hardly believe they were not fishes jumping up
in sport, like as she had frequently seen the bonito do when off the
African coast in the Atlantic.

The jolly-boat had such a spanking breeze from the north-west all the
way with her, right abaft the beam, that she accomplished the distance
between the head of the inlet and Betsy Cove before nightfall, Mr
Meldrum shaping her course so well by the old chart he had that she
fetched the harbour in a bee-line almost from their point of departure,
steering east by south.

There was no mistaking the place.

Betsy Cove was a second bay within a larger one, called "Accessible Bay"
on the chart and marked by a curious isolated mountain-peak which raised
itself on the very extremity of a low spit of land that ran out into the
sea, a long way out