t all we can out o' this good wind.
If it takes us into the southeast trades, well and good. We can feel
our way across on the trade-wind--unless we hit something, of course.
You see, it blows almost out of the east on this side, and 'll haul
more to the sou'east and south'ard as we get over. By the wind first,
then we'll square away as we need to. We'll know the smell o' the
trades--nothing like it on earth--and the smell o' the Gold Coast,
Ivory Coast, Slave Coast, and the Kameruns. And I'll lay odds we can
feel the heat o' the sun in the east and west enough to make a fair
guess at the course. But it won't come to that. Some of us 'll be able
to see pretty soon."

It was wild talk, but the demoralized mate needed encouraging. He
answered with a steadier voice: "Lucky we got in grub and water
yesterday."

"Right you are, Angel. Now, in case this holds on to us, why, we'll
find some of our friends over in the Bight, and they'll know by our rig
that something's wrong. Flanders is somewhere on the track,--you know
he went back to the nigger business,--and Chink put a slave-deck in his
hold down Rio way last spring. And old man Slack--I did him a service
when I crippled the corvette that was after him, and he's grateful.
Hope we'll meet him. I'd rather meet Chink than Flanders in the dark,
and I'd trust a Javanese trader before either. If either of them come
aboard we'll be ready to use their eyes for our benefit, not let 'em
use ours for theirs. Flanders once said he liked the looks of this
brig."

"S'pose we run foul of a bulldog?"

"We'll have to chance it. This coast's full o' them, too. Great guns,
man! Would you drift around and do nothing? Anywhere east of due south
there's no land nearer than Cape Orange, and that's three hundred and
fifty miles from here. Beginning to-morrow noon, we'll take deep-sea
soundings until we strike the trade-wind."

The negro cook felt his way through the preparing of meals and served
them on time. The watches were set, and sail was put on the brig as
fast as the men became accustomed to the new way of steering, those
relieved always imparting what they had learned to their successors.
Before nightfall on that first day they were scudding under foresail,
topsail and topgallantsail and maintopsail, with the spanker furled as
useless, and the jib adding its aid to the foretopmast-staysail in
keeping the brig before the quartering seas which occasionally climbed
aboard. The bowspri