serve to
guide them. Now, when winter was close at hand, they had leagues of
surf-swept beach to search for three men who might have perished twelve
months earlier.

"We'll stand in until we pick up the beach," he said at length; "then
if there's no sign of them we'll push north as long as we can find open
water. Now if you'll call Charly I'll let up at the wheel."

Another white man walked aft, and Wyllard, entering the little stern
cabin, the top of which rose some feet above the deck, sloughed off his
wet oilskins and crawled, dressed as he was, into his bunk. Evening
was closing in, and for awhile he lay blinking at the swinging lamp,
and wondering what the end of that search would be. The _Selache_ was
a little fore and aft schooner of some ninety-odd tons, wholly
unprotected against ice-chafe or nip, and he knew that prudence
dictated their driving her south under every rag of canvas now. There
was, however, the possibility of finding some sheltered inlet where she
could lie out the winter, frozen in, and he had, at least, blind
confidence in his men. The white men were sealers who had already
borne the lash of snow-laden gales, the wash of icy seas, and
tremendous labour at the oar, while the Indians had been born to an
unending struggle with the waters. All of them had times and times
again looked the King of Terrors squarely in the face. What was as
much to the purpose, they had been promised a tempting bonus if the
_Selache_ came home successful.

While Wyllard pondered upon these things he went to sleep, and slept
soundly, as he did the next night, though Dampier expected to raise the
beach some time next morning. His expectation also proved warranted,
and when Wyllard turned out it lay before them, a dingy smear on a
slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of livid
whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf. It had cost
him in several ways more than he cared to contemplate to reach that
beach, and now there was nothing that could excite any feeling except
shrinking in the dreary spectacle. There was little light in the heavy
sky or on the sullen heave of sea; the air was raw, the schooner's
decks were sloppy, and she rolled viciously as she crept shorewards
with her mainsail peak eased down. What wind there was blew dead
on-shore, which was not as he would have had it.

He heard the splash of the lead as he and the white man Charly made
their breakfast in the li