d the lieutenant to Hans, "we shall be carried
far past the Cape, and how to regain it I don't know, for we shall have
the current dead against us, and we have neither water nor provisions
for a long voyage. There is only one cask of water, and the biscuit is,
I fear, wet with salt water, so that our provisions are short; but there
is no help for us; we must go on as long as this wind and this sea last,
and trust to being picked up, though I believe we may be three hundred
miles from the Cape."

During the whole of the night the boats kept a westerly course, and
before the wind. As morning dawned, the horizon was anxiously scanned
in order to find a ship, but the ocean seemed deserted, and mid-day came
without any signs of a vessel. The officer again tried to find his
latitude, and decided that he was still upwards of twenty miles south of
the Cape. From an observation he had made in the morning, he also
concluded that, allowing every likely error for the chronometer, he must
yet be many degrees west of the Cape, and was drifting rapidly westward.
Having come to this conclusion, he signalled for the second boat to
come close alongside, when he said--

"Now, my lads, we have drifted so far from the Cape that I fear with
these small boats, and such a sea as we may have to meet, we can't reach
the Cape before our provisions and water are all done. We have, then,
two chances: we may hang about here, and take our chance of being picked
up by a vessel, or we can run on with all speed, and try to make some
islands which lie out westward. I'm not sure we can get water on those
islands, but we may do so, and I believe they have no inhabitants. As
this is a question you are all concerned in, I'll hear what you have to
say."

The sailors talked among themselves for some minutes, and then Jones,
who was in charge of the second boat, said--

"We think, sir, that we should make sail for the islands. We don't lose
our chance of sighting a ship by doing so, though it be a bit away from
the outward-bound course; but if a gale comes up, we just go down in
these cockle-shells, and that's all about it. I have heerd from whalers
that there is water in some of them islands, and any way we get a bit of
a rest, and with our boats we can go out and look for ships when the
weather suits. We think, sir, that's our best chance."

"I am of the same opinion," said the lieutenant. "Has any one else any
thing to say?"

"We all think