nd give buoyancy.

[Illustration: Captain Slocum drifting out to sea.]

On August 22, the kpeting, or whatever else it was that held the sloop
in the islands, let go its hold, and she swung out to sea under all
sail, heading again for home. Mounting one or two heavy rollers on the
fringe of the atoll, she cleared the flashing reefs. Long before dark
Keeling Cocos, with its thousand souls, as sinless in their lives as
perhaps it is possible for frail mortals to be, was left out of sight,
astern. Out of sight, I say, except in my strongest affection.

The sea was rugged, and the _Spray_ washed heavily when hauled on the
wind, which course I took for the island of Rodriguez, and which
brought the sea abeam. The true course for the island was west by
south, one quarter south, and the distance was nineteen hundred miles;
but I steered considerably to the windward of that to allow for the
heave of the sea and other leeward effects. My sloop on this course
ran under reefed sails for days together. I naturally tired of the
never-ending motion of the sea, and, above all, of the wetting I got
whenever I showed myself on deck. Under these heavy weather conditions
the _Spray_ seemed to lag behind on her course; at least, I attributed
to these conditions a discrepancy in the log, which by the fifteenth
day out from Keeling amounted to one hundred and fifty miles between
the rotator and the mental calculations I had kept of what she should
have gone, and so I kept an eye lifting for land. I could see about
sundown this day a bunch of clouds that stood in one spot, right
ahead, while the other clouds floated on; this was a sign of
something. By midnight, as the sloop sailed on, a black object
appeared where I had seen the resting clouds. It was still a long way
off, but there could be no mistaking this: it was the high island of
Rodriguez. I hauled in the patent log, which I was now towing more
from habit than from necessity, for I had learned the _Spray_ and her
ways long before this. If one thing was clearer than another in her
voyage, it was that she could be trusted to come out right and in
safety, though at the same time I always stood ready to give her the
benefit of even the least doubt. The officers who are over-sure, and
"know it all like a book," are the ones, I have observed, who wreck
the most ships and lose the most lives. The cause of the discrepancy
in the log was one often met with, namely, coming in contact with som