met, I returned the
despoiled bale to its place in the hatchway, replaced the hatches, and
battened everything securely down once more. The remainder of the day I
devoted to the task of pumping the ship dry.

The two succeeding days were quite devoid of incident; the weather held
fine, and the wind so light that the brig made barely three knots in the
hour, on a taut bowline; there was nothing particular to do, for the
small air of wind that continued to blow hung obstinately at east, and
we were still driving slowly south, the vessel steering herself. Under
these circumstances, as I was daily growing increasingly anxious to fall
in with a sail of some sort that would take us off, and convey us to a
civilised port, or even lend me a few hands to help in carrying the brig
to Cape Town, I spent pretty nearly the whole of the day in the
main-topmast crosstrees, from whence I could obtain the most extended
view possible, and perhaps be thus able to intercept some craft that
would otherwise slip past us unseen.

On the third day after my raid upon the cargo I was aloft as usual--the
hour being about ten a.m.,--while Miss Onslow was busy in and out of the
galley. The ship was creeping along at a speed of about two and a half
knots, when, slowly and carefully sweeping the horizon afresh with the
telescope, after a rather long spell of meditation upon how this
adventure was likely to end, a small, hazy-looking, ill-defined object
swam into the field of the instrument. The object was about one point
before the weather beam, and was so far away that the rarefaction of the
air imparted to it a wavering indistinctness of aspect that rendered it
quite unrecognisable. The fact, however, that it was visible at all in
the slightly hazy atmosphere led me to estimate its distance from the
brig as about ten miles, while, from its apparent size, it might be
either a boat, a raft, or a piece of floating wreckage. But whatever it
might be, I determined to examine it, since it would be nothing out of
my way, and would merely involve the labour of getting the ship round
upon the other tack; so I continued to watch it until it had drifted to
a couple of points abaft the beam--which occurred just two and a half
hours after I had first sighted it, thus confirming my estimate as to
its distance--when I put the helm hard down, lashed it, and then tended
the braces as the brig sluggishly came up into the wind and as
sluggishly paid off on the