ut from time to time to look at the
lashings. As soon as day broke Frank roused himself and went out; Hiram
was just descending from one of the boughs.

"I have had a look round," he said; "I don't think it's blowing quite so
hard, but thar ain't much change yet. It ain't not to say a cheerful kind
of lookout."

Frank climbed up to take a view for himself, but he was glad to return
very quickly to the shelter of the cabin. Overhead was a canopy of low
grey cloud; around, a curtain of driving rain; below, a chaos of
white-headed waves. The day passed slowly, and with little change. Sam
found in the fore-part of the boat the iron plate on which he built his
fire. They fixed this on the roof of the cabin, fastened a tarpaulin
across the boughs so as to shelter it from the rain and drift, and
then, with some difficulty, managed to make a fire. Some hot coffee was
first prepared, and a frying-pan was then put on and filled with slices
of pork. The flour was wet, but Sam made some flat cakes of the wet
dough, and placed them in the fat to fry when the pork was done.

"Not a bad meal that," Hiram said, when he had finished, "for a floating
forest."

The negroes had now completely recovered from the effects of their
fright and wetting, and their spirits, as usual, found vent in merry
choruses.

"Just like children, ain't they?" Hiram said, as he and Frank re-entered
the cabin, while the negroes continued to feast overhead, "crying one
moment and laughing the next. But I have known some good uns among them
too, as good mates to work with as a man could want, and as good grit as
a white man." Another meal, later in the afternoon, alone broke the
monotony of the day. The aspect of the weather was unchanged at
nightfall, but Hiram asserted that the wind had certainly gone down, and
that in the morning there would probably be a break in the weather. They
smoked for some time, and then the negroes dozed off, with their chins
on their chests; and Frank was about to make an effort to do the same,
when Hiram, who had been going in and out several times, said suddenly,
"I reckon we are out of the main stream; don't you feel the difference?"

Now that his attention was called to it, Frank wondered that he had not
noticed it before. The waves were no longer washing over the fore-part
of the boat, and the sluggish efforts of the tree and boat to rise and
fall with the water had ceased. He was still more struck, when he went
outside,