thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance
which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of
land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an
hour. "We should ha' tuk warnin', Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what
wer' a-coming and so he swum ashore in time, he did!"

"Rover is a faithless creature!" cried Bob hotly. "I'll give him a good
licking when we reach the land again, you see!"

"When'll that be, Master Bob?"

"Oh, some time or other before night," replied he defiantly, but Dick
could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so
buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day
wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of
circumstances.

They did not pass a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw
several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few
lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the
cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their
drooping spirits, Bob and Dick thinking that the wind by and by would
affect them, too.

But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further
and further out to sea.

"Hallo, there's a steamer!" sang out Bob after another protracted
silence between the pair. "I see her smoke easily. She's steering
right for us!"

"Where?" asked Dick. "I doesn't see no steamer, Master Bob."

"There!" said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon.
"There she is, blowing off her steam, or her funnel smoking, quite
plain!"

"Lor', Master Bob!" ejaculated the other, after peering fixedly for a
moment where his companion directed him to look. "That arn't no steam
or smoke as ever I seed. It be a cloud, or fog, I knows; or summut o'
that sort, sure-ly, Master Bob!"

Bob, however, would not be persuaded of this, persisting that he was
right and Dick wrong.

"I don't know where your eyes can be!" he said scornfully. "I'll bet
anything it's a steamer; or, I never saw one!"

But ere another hour had passed over their heads, Dick was proved to be
the true prophet; he, the false!

The low-lying bank of vapour, which originally resembled the trail of
smoke from some passing steam-vessel on her way down Channel, gradually
spread itself out along the horizon.

It then rose up, like a curtain, from the sea; and, stretching up its
clammy heads towards the zenith,