little boy everything in his craft which seemed amusing.

Without fear Mrs. Weldon saw Jack, in company with Dick Sand, spring
out on the shrouds, climb to the top of the mizzen-mast, or to the
booms of the mizzen-topmast, and come down again like an arrow the
whole length of the backstays. Dick Sand went before or followed him,
always ready to hold him up or keep him back, if his six-year-old arms
grew feeble during those exercises. All that benefited little Jack,
whom sickness had made somewhat pale; but his color soon came back on
board the "Pilgrim," thanks to this gymnastic, and to the bracing
sea-breezes.

So passed the time. Under these conditions the passage was being
accomplished, and only the weather was not very favorable, neither the
passengers nor the crew of the "Pilgrim" would have had cause to
complain.

Meanwhile this continuance of east winds made Captain Hull anxious. He
did not succeed in getting the vessel into the right course. Later,
near the Tropic of Capricorn, he feared finding calms which would delay
him again, without speaking of the equatorial current, which would
irresistibly throw him back to the west. He was troubled then, above
all, for Mrs. Weldon, by the delays for which, meanwhile, he was not
responsible. So, if he should meet, on his course, some transatlantic
steamer on the way toward America, he already thought of advising his
passenger to embark on it. Unfortunately, he was detained in latitudes
too high to cross a steamer running to Panama; and, besides, at that
period communication across the Pacific, between Australia and the New
World, was not as frequent as it has since become.

It then was necessary to leave everything to the grace of God, and it
seemed as if nothing would trouble this monotonous passage, when the
first incident occurred precisely on that day, February 2d, in the
latitude and longitude indicated at the beginning of this history.

Dick Sand and Jack, toward nine o'clock in the morning, in very clear
weather, were installed on the booms of the mizzen-topmast. Thence they
looked down on the whole ship and a portion of the ocean in a largo
circumference. Behind, the perimeter of the horizon was broken to their
eyes, only by the mainmast, carrying brigantine and fore-staff. That
beacon hid from them a part of the sea and the sky. In the front, they
saw the bowsprit stretching over the waves, with its three jibs, which
were hauled tightly, spread out like thr