he marine, turning to Mrs. Fryker and her
daughter, "is a little piece of wood with a long line to it, that they
throw out behind a vessel to see how fast she is going. I am not a
regular Jack Tar myself, and don't understand the principle of the
thing, but it tells you exactly how many miles an hour the ship is
going.

"In about two minutes Mr. Rogers stepped up, with his eyes like two
auger-holes, and said he, 'Captain, we're makin' no knots an hour.
We're not sailing at all.'

"'Get out,' roared the captain, 'don't you see the sails? Don't you
feel the wind? Throw that log again, sir.'

"Well, they threw the log again, the captain saw it done, and sure
enough Mr. Rogers was right. The vessel wasn't moving. With a wind that
ought to have carried her spinning along, miles and miles in an hour,
she was standing stock-still. The skipper here let out one of the
strongest imprecations used in navigation, and said he, 'Mr. Rogers, is
it possible that there is a sand-bar in the middle of the Bay of
Bengal, and that we've stuck on it? Cast the lead.'

"I will just state to the ladies," said the marine, turning toward the
table, "that the lead is a heavy weight that is lowered to the bottom
of a body of water to see how deep it is, and this operation is called
sounding. Well, they sounded and they sounded, but everywhere--fore,
aft, and midship--they found plenty of water; in fact, not having a
line for deep-sea sounding they couldn't touch bottom at all.

"I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen," said the marine, looking from
one to the other of the party, "that things now began to feel creepy. I
am not afraid of storms, nor fires at sea, nor any of the common
accidents of the ocean; but for a ship to stand still with plenty of
water under her, and a strong wind filling her sails, has more of the
uncanny about it than I fancy. Pretty near the whole of the crew was on
deck by this time, and I could see that they felt very much as I did,
but nobody seemed to know what to say about it.

"Suddenly the captain thought that some unknown current was setting
against us, and forcing the vessel back with the same power that the
wind was forcing her forward, and he tried to put the ship about so as
to have the wind on her starboard quarter; but as she hadn't any
headway, or for some other reason, this didn't work. Then it struck him
that perhaps one of the anchors had been accidentally dropped, but they
were all in their places,