billows anon, and, later on still,
into great rolling waves as the wind got up--this blowing steadily from
the eastwards first and then veering round south, following the course
of the orb whose heat gave it being.

Nor was inanimate nature only stirring.

Grey and silver sea-gulls hovered over the little cutter, all sweeping
down curiously every now and then to see what the boys were doing there
in that mastless and oar-less boat out on the wide waters; and,
presently, a shoal of mackerel rose round about them, so thickly that
Dick thought he could scoop up some in the buckets, only the fish were
too wary and dived down below the surface the moment he stretched his
arm out over the side beyond his reach.

A couple of porpoises, too, swam by, playing leap-frog again; and, after
these, a much larger monster, which might possibly have been a grampus,
though Bob could tell nothing about it, not knowing what it was. The
movements of all these, with the constantly-changing appearance of the
sea, now blue, now green, now brown, as some cloud shadow passed over
it, made up a varied panorama such as neither of the two lads ever saw
or thought of before!

Ships, also, hove in sight and disappeared on the horizon, their white
sails gleaming out in the far-off distance; one moment high in the air
as if bound skywards, the next sinking into the curving depths of the
sea.

Now and again, too, the smoke-wreath of some passing steamer, coasting
along more speedily than the sailing craft, would sacrilegiously blot
the blue of the heavens!

But, all the while, though the distant ships might sail along to their
haven, and the steamers shape shorter courses to their port independent
of wind and tide alike, the poor dismasted, dismantled little yacht was
the sport of all alike; first setting down Channel with the ebb, as if
going out on a cruise into the wide Atlantic, and then again up Channel
with the flood towards Dover.

The boat was ever drifting and tossed about ever, like a battered
shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for
the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the
English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn,
and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every
twenty-four hours, trying fruitlessly to soothe the differences of the
quarrelsome quartette!

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

DESPAIR!

"How hot it be, Master Bob!"