circumstances, but, of course, that wasn't very much. I hoisted a
flag upside down, and after considering the matter I concluded to take
in all the sails that had been set. I thought that a steamer without
smoke coming from her funnel, and no sails set, would be more likely to
attract attention from distant vessels than if she appeared to be under
sail.

"I am not a regular sailor, as I said before, but I got out on the
yard, and cut the square sail loose and let it drop on the deck, and I
let the jib come down on a run, and managed to bundle it up some way on
the bowsprit. This sort of thing took all the nautical gymnastics that
I was master of, and entirely occupied my mind, so that I found myself
whistling while I worked. I hoped Miss Minturn heard me whistle,
because it would not only give her courage, but would let her see that
I was not a man who couldn't keep up his spirits in a case like this.

"When that work was over, I began to wonder what I should do next, and
then an idea struck me. 'Suppose,' thought I, 'that we are not
stationary, but that we are in some queer kind of a current, and that
the water, ship and all are steadily moving on together, so that after
awhile we shall come in sight of land, or into the track of vessels!'

"I instantly set about to find out if this was the case. It was about
noon, and it so happened that on the day before, when the chief officer
took his observation, I was seized with a desire to watch him and see
how he did it. I don't see why I should have had this notion, but I had
it, and I paid the strictest attention to the whole business,
calculation part and all, and I found out exactly how it was done.

"Well, then, I went and got the quadrant,--that's the thing they do it
with,--and I took an observation, and I found that we were in latitude
15 deg. north, 90 deg. east, exactly where we had been twenty-four hours
before!

"When I found out this, I turned so faint that I wanted to sit down and
cover up my head. The Water-devil had us, there was no mistake about
it, and no use trying to think of anything else. I staggered along the
deck, went below, and cooked myself a meal. In a case like this there's
nothing like a square meal to keep a man up.

"I know you don't like to hear her mentioned," said the marine, turning
to the blacksmith, "but I am bound to say that in course of the
afternoon Miss Minturn came on deck several times, to ask if anything
new had happened, an