get snugly to sea without further humbugging. And the afternoon
wore on without our seeing either the lighthouse, the castle, or the
town we were looking for; and just upon dusk the coast turned sharply
off to the eastward.

"That looks like a bay," said Haigh, squinting at the land that was
rising and falling over our weather quarter. "If we hold on as we are
going, we ought to pick up the other horn of it." So we stuck to the
course for three hours, and then came to the conclusion that the point
we had seen must have been the extremity of the island, and that we
were at present heading for a continent named Africa, then distant some
two hundred nautical miles.

The discovery cast a gloom over the ship's company. Our nerves were in
a condition then for taking strong impressions. For myself, all
lightheartedness flitted away. The ugly cutter's good deeds were
forgotten, and she appeared nothing more nor less than an ill-formed
cockle-shell. The gale was terrific. I was bone-weary; also the most
particularly damned fool on the globe's surface.

What Haigh's personal conclusions were I do not know. He said nothing,
but stood propped against the weather runner, mumbling over an unlit
cigar and peering into the mist.

After a while he turned. "Here, give me the helm, Cospatric, and do you
get your strong fists on the main-sheet. We'll put her on the wind
again, as close-hauled as she'll look at it. It's no use ratching up to
windward again hunting for Ciudadella, as ten to one we'd miss it a
second time. We'll just run along the lee coast here for Port Mahon.
There, now she's heading up for it like a steamer."

There was silence for a while, and we listened to the swish of the seas
and the rattle of the wind through the rigging. Then Haigh delivered
himself of further wisdom.

"It's a queer gamble this, take it through and back, and it's
remarkably like roulette in being a game where a system doesn't pay. As
long as we worked haphazard we did wonders. As soon as we tried to do a
rational thing, and make that harbour at Ciudadella, we got euchred.
Well, I dare say we both know how to take a whipping without howling
over it. So for the present let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we may
drown. Knock me a biscuit out of the weevils, old chappie, and give me
likewise vermouth and corned horse."

Had the wind remained in its old quarter, we could have made one board
of it all up the southern flank of the island; but, as