ell me that!"

"Why, sir, he sent word round to all our stations and down to the
Dockyard, and he's telegraphed likewise to the h'island so as how
there'll be a strict look-out kep' all round the coast for the poor
lads."

"I am very much obliged to you, Hellyer, and to the commander as well,"
said the Captain as he and Mr Strong turned away mournfully, retracing
their steps back to "the Moorings." "I'm afraid we can do nothing more
now."

No, nothing more could be done then.

The morning brought no news to gladden their hearts or brighten their
hopes.

Matters, indeed, looked worse than had been expected.

For, as the day wore on, reports reached the Dockyard from the different
coastguard-stations along the eastern and western coast of the mainland
and from the Isle of Wight, whence a strict look-out had been kept on
the approaches to Spithead and the adjacent waters of the Channel.

These reports were all to the same effect.

Not a trace had been seen of the missing boat; nor anything heard of Bob
and Dick.

It was the same the following day, nothing likewise being then reported;
although the search had been redoubled and one of the Government tugs
sent out from the harbour to scour the offing.

Hope now gave way to despair before the certainty that stared them in
the face, putting possibility beyond doubt.

Everybody believed the boat had been swamped, or run down in the fog,
and that Bob and Dick were drowned!

Poor boys!

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

A SEA-FOG.

"Now," said Bob to himself, when he got down to the beach after a sharp
run across the common, "I must be as spry as possible with my swim, or
else I shall be too late for the boat, as dad said I would be, for I
really haven't got much time to spare!"

Unfortunately, however, at the very outset, poor Bob met with obstacles
that prevented this praiseworthy intention being effectively carried
out. In the first place, Dick, with whom he had always bathed in
company since their first involuntary dip together off the castle
rampart on the first evening of their arrival at Southsea, was not at
their usual trysting-place. Not only that, he was nowhere to be seen in
the neighbourhood of the shore.

"I wonder where he can be?" said Bob, continuing his soliloquy in a very
disjointed frame of mind, after looking in every direction fruitlessly,
and calling out Dick's name in vain. "I wonder where he can be? The
Captain did not say he wasn't t