to see my signal would stop for me. But of one thing
I was sure: If it chanced that a whaling ship came within sight of the
dead leviathan my peril would soon be over. This huge beast had not been
long dead and it would be all clear gain to any "blubber boiler" that
chanced to pass that way.

Nor was the possibility of being rescued by a whaleship so slight as it
would have been a few years before. There were for two decades, few
whaling barks put forth from the New England ports; but of late years
there is either a greater demand for whale-oil, or the cachelot (the
sperm whale) is becoming more frequently seen both in northern and
southern seas, and is being hunted both by steam vessels and by the
old-time whaling ships.

I didn't know where I was--that is, my position in the North Atlantic;
but I believed that I had sailed so far and so fast in the sloop that I
was about midway of the course of the British steam lines running 'twixt
Halifax and the Bermudas. Those two ports are between seven and eight
hundred miles apart, and I suspected I was nearer one or the other than
I was to Boston! I knew I had done some tall sailing since being swept
out of Bolderhead Harbor.

After having cooked and eaten a hearty breakfast, despite the blowing of
the gale--for dirty weather prevailed and rain swept down in torrents
every hour or two--I set about making such slight repairs as I could
with the tools and materials I had at hand. And while thus engaged I
made a discovery that--to say the least--startled me.

Dragging over the bows of the Wavecrest was the cable by which she
had been moored in Bolderhead Harbor. I had never chanced to draw it
aboard. Now I did so. It was only a bit, some three or four feet long.
And instead of finding it frayed and broken by the strain of the sloop
as she dragged at her old anchorage, I found that the hemp had been cut
sharply across. Nothing less than a knife--and a sharp one--had severed
that cable when it was taut!

The appearance of the bit of rope gave me such a jolt that I sat down
and stared at it. I had been quite sure that Paul Downes and his friends
knew I was aboard the Wavecrest when they nailed me into the cabin.
But it really never crossed my mind that they had deliberately cut the
sloop adrift. But here was evidence of the crime. There was no doubting
it. I had been imprisoned on the Wavecrest and then the sloop was sent
on a voyage which Paul and his friends must have realiz