ven the forts beginning to
show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.

"Master Bob, Master Bob!" he cried in consternation, never having been
so far out before, even with the Captain. "Do 'ee know where we be
now?"

"Why, out at sea, to be sure!" said Bob, his face all aglow with delight
at gliding thus like Byron's corsair-- "O'er the glad waters of the deep
blue sea."

For his soul certainly was, for the moment, quite as "boundless" and his
"thoughts as free," from all consideration, save of the present--"Isn't
it jolly?"

"Well, I doesn't know about that," replied Dick, looking very glum.
"I'm a-thinking of the gitting back; which, wi' the tide a-setting out
from the harbour, won't be so easy, I knows!"

"Nonsense, Dick!" said Bob in his usual off-hand way, though bringing
the cutter up to the wind, so as to go about on the other tack. "You're
frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got
round more to the south; so we'll be able to run back to Portsmouth in
no time. The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a
wind!"

However, "Man proposes and God disposes."

The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out
from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of
running in homewards "in no time," the cutter, after a time, became
becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open
Channel again.

Dick was the first to notice this.

"Look, Master Bob!" he cried. "We aren't making no headway at all! I
don't see we're getting any the nearer to the Nab!"

"We will, soon," replied Bob, all hopeful. "It's only because the
breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we'll pick it up again! I
think, Dick, we'd better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away
more!"

This was done; but, still the _Zephyr_ would not move.

She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows
pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies
swayed her in this direction and that.

"I knewed we was doin' wrong," remarked Dick presently, after a long
silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. "It's a judgment on
us!"

"A fiddlestick!" retorted Bob. "We'll only drift about like this for a
short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to
Spithead like one o'clock!"

"I doesn't believe that, Master Bob," said Dick disconsolately, sitting
down on a