n like this,
we'll never get back."

"Good heavens, what shall we do?" said Fritz.

"I'm sure, I can't say," replied Eric despondently.

"Can't we put back?"

"No; we'd be upset in an instant, if we attempted it."

"Then, we're lost!" exclaimed Fritz. "The land is now growing quite
faint in the distance and each moment it sinks lower and lower!"

This was not the worst, either.

The afternoon was drawing to a close; and, the sky being overcast,
darkness threatened presently to creep over the water and shut out
everything from their gaze.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

ANXIOUS TIMES.

The boat continued driving before the wind for some little time, until
the mountain cliffs of Inaccessible Island gradually lost their contour.
They had become but a mere haze in the distance, when Eric, who had
been intently gazing upward at the sky since Fritz's last speech of
alarm, and seemed buried in despondency, suddenly appeared to wake up
into fresh life.

He had noticed the clouds being swept rapidly overhead in the same
direction in which the boat was travelling; but, all at once, they now
appeared to be stationary, or else, the waves must be bearing their
frail little craft along faster than the wind's speed. What could this
puzzling state of things mean? Eric reflected a moment and then
astonished Fritz as they both sat in the stern-sheets, by convulsively
grasping his hand.

"The wind has turned, brother!" he cried out in a paroxysm of joy.

Fritz thought he was going mad. "Why, my poor fellow, what's the
matter?" he said soothingly.

"Matter, eh?" shouted out Eric boisterously, wringing | his brother's
hand up and down. "I mean that the wind has changed! It is chopping
round to the opposite | corner of the compass, like most gales in these
latitudes, that's what's the matter! See those clouds there?"

Fritz looked up to where the other pointed in the sky--to a spot near
the zenith.

"Well," continued the lad, "a moment ago those clouds there were
whirling along the same course as ourselves. Then, when I first called
out to you, they stopped, as if uncertain what to do; while now, as you
can notice for yourself, they seem to be impelled in the very opposite
direction. What do you think that means?"

Fritz was silent, only half convinced, for the send of the sea appeared
to be rolling their unhappy boat further and further from the island,
which, only a bare speck on the horizon, could be but very fa