ever, and their boat is threatened with the fate of the barque.

The bulk of the _Calypso's_ crew, with Lyons, the chief mate, have taken
to the pinnace; and the skipper is in his own gig, with his wife,
daughter, son, young Chester, and two others--Seagriff, the carpenter,
and the cook, a negro. In all only seven persons, but enough to bring
the gunwale of the little craft dangerously near the water's edge. The
captain himself is in the stern-sheets, tiller-lines in hand. Mrs
Gancy and her daughter crouch beside him, while the others are at the
oars, in which occupation Ned and Chester occasionally pause to bale
out, as showers of spray keep breaking over the boat, threatening to
swamp it.

What point shall they steer for? This is a question that no one asks,
nor thinks of asking as yet. Course and direction are as nothing now;
all their energies are bent on keeping the boat above water. However,
they naturally endeavour to remain in the company of the pinnace. But
those in the larger craft, like themselves, are engaged in a
life-and-death conflict with the sea, and both must fight it out in
their own way, neither being able to give aid to the other. So, despite
their efforts to keep near each other, the winds and waves soon separate
them, and they only can catch glimpses of each other when buoyed up on
the crest of a billow. When the night comes on--a night of dungeon
darkness--they see each other no more.

But, dark as it is, there is still visible that which they have been
long regarding with dread--the breakers known as the "Milky Way."
Snow-white during the day, these terrible rock-tortured billows now
gleam like a belt of liquid fire, the breakers at every crest seeming to
break into veritable flames. Well for the castaways that this is the
case; else how, in such obscurity, could the dangerous lee-shore be
shunned? To keep off that is, for the time, the chief care of those in
the gig; and all their energies are exerted in holding their craft well
to windward.

By good fortune the approach of night has brought about a shifting of
the wind, which has veered around to the west-north-west, making it
possible for them to "scud," without nearer approach to the dreaded
fire-like line. In their cockleshell of a boat, they know that to run
before the wind is their safest plan, and so they speed on
south-eastward. An ocean current setting from the north-west also helps
them in this course.

Thus doubly