"Then, we're lost!" exclaimed Fritz. "The land is now growing quite faint in the distance and each moment it sinks lower and lower!"

This was not the worst, either.

The afternoon was drawing to a close; and, the sky being overcast, darkness threatened presently to creep over the water and shut out everything from their gaze.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

ANXIOUS TIMES.

The boat continued driving before the wind for some little time, until the mountain cliffs of Inaccessible Island gradually lost their contour.

They had become but a mere haze in the distance, when Eric, who had been intently gazing upward at the sky since Fritz's last speech of alarm, and seemed buried in despondency, suddenly appeared to wake up into fresh life.

He had noticed the clouds being swept rapidly overhead in the same direction in which the boat was travelling; but, all at once, they now appeared to be stationary, or else, the waves must be bearing their frail little craft along faster than the wind's speed. What could this puzzling state of things mean? Eric reflected a moment and then astonished Fritz as they both sat in the stern-sheets, by convulsively grasping his hand.

"The wind has turned, brother!" he cried out in a paroxysm of joy.

Fritz thought he was going mad. "Why, my poor fellow, what's the matter?" he said soothingly.

"Matter, eh?" shouted out Eric boisterously, wringing | his brother's hand up and down. "I mean that the wind has changed! It is chopping round to the opposite | corner of the compa.s.s, like most gales in these lat.i.tudes, that's what's the matter! See those clouds there?"

Fritz looked up to where the other pointed in the sky--to a spot near the zenith.

"Well," continued the lad, "a moment ago those clouds there were whirling along the same course as ourselves. Then, when I first called out to you, they stopped, as if uncertain what to do; while now, as you can notice for yourself, they seem to be impelled in the very opposite direction. What do you think that means?"

Fritz was silent, only half convinced, for the send of the sea appeared to be rolling their unhappy boat further and further from the island, which, only a bare speck on the horizon, could be but very faintly seen astern, low down on the water.

"It means," said Eric, answering his own question, without waiting longer for his brother's reply, "that the same wind which bore us away from our dear little bay is about to waft us back again to it; still, we must look out sharply to help ourselves and not neglect a chance. Oars out, old fellow!"

"But, it is impossible to row amidst these waves," the other expostulated.

"Bah, nothing is impossible to brave men!" cried the sailor lad valiantly. "I only want to get her head round to sea. Perhaps, though, my old friend that served me in such good stead when the _Gustav Barentz_ foundered may serve my turn better now; we'll try a floating anchor, brother, that's what we'll do, eh?"

"All right, you know best," replied Fritz, who, to tell the truth, had very little hopes of their ever seeing the island again. He thought that, no matter what Eric might attempt, all would be labour in vain.

The sailor lad, on the contrary, was of a different opinion. He was not the one to let a chance slip when there seemed a prospect of safety, however remote that prospect might be!

Rapidly attaching a rope round the bale of sealskins that were amidships, thinking these more adapted for his purpose than the oars, which he had first intended using, he hove the ma.s.s overboard, gently poising it on the side and letting it slip gradually into the water. He did this in order that he might not disturb the balance of the boat, which any sudden rash movement would have done, causing her probably to heel over--for the waves, when they raced by, came level with her gunwale, and an inch more either way would have swamped her.

In a few seconds after this impromptu anchor was tried, the effect on the whale-boat's buoyancy became marvellous.

Swinging round by degrees, Eric helping the operation by an occasional short paddle with one of the oars he had handy, the little craft presently rode head to sea, some little distance to leeward of the sealskins whose weight sunk them almost to the level of the water; and then, another unexpected thing happened.

The oil attached to the still reeking skins came floating out on the surface of the sea, so calming the waves in their vicinity that these did not break any longer, but glided under the keel of the boat with a heavy rolling undulation.

"This is more than I hoped!" exclaimed Eric joyfully. "Why, we'll be able to ride out the gale capitally now; and, as soon as the wind chops round--as it has already done in the upper currents of air, a sure sign that it will presently blow along the water from the same quarter--why, we can up anchor and away home!"

"How shall we ever know the proper direction in which to steer?" asked Fritz, who was still faint-hearted about the result of the adventure.

"We won't steer at all," said Eric. "There are no currents to speak of about here; and as we have run south-westwards before the north-easter, if we run back in an opposite direction before the south-wester, which is not far off now from setting in, why we must arrive pretty nearly at the same point from which we started."

"But we may then pa.s.s the island by a second time and be as badly off as we are now."

"What an old croaker you are!" cried Eric impatiently. "Won't I be on the look-out to see that such an accident as that shan't happen? We'll have to be very careful in turning the boat however--so as to bring the wind abeam when we get up abreast of the island, in order to beat into the bay--for the poor craft is so leaky and cranky now that she'll not stand much buffeting about."

"Can't I do anything?" asked Fritz, beginning to regain his courage and bestir himself, now that he reflected that their chances of getting back to the island were not so precarious and slight as he had at first imagined.

"Yes, you can bale out the boat, if you like," said Eric. "She's nearly half full of water now and continues leaking like a sieve. The seams strain and yawn awfully when she rides, even worse than when she was flying along at the mercy of the wind and waves. Still, we must try to keep her clear if possible, as the lighter and more buoyant she is, the better chance have we of getting out of this mess."

"I'll do the baling gladly," rejoined Fritz, really pleased at doing something, and beginning at once with the job, using a large tin pannikin that they had taken with them.

"Then, fire away," said Eric. "It will be as much as I can do to attend to the steering of the boat. Look sharp, old fellow, and get some of the light ballast out of her! I see a light scud creeping up from leeward, behind us, with the waves fringing up into a curl before it.

The wind has chopped round at last and we'll have to cut and run as soon as it reaches us."

Fritz baled away with the tin pannikin for dear life.

"Now, brother," cried Eric, a moment later, "get your knife ready, and go forwards into the bows. I want you, the instant I sing out, to give a slash across the painter holding us to our moorings."

"What, and lose our bundle of sealskins!" exclaimed the practical Fritz.

"Lose them? Of course! Do you think we'd have time to lug them into the boat before we'd be p.o.o.ped! What are the blessed things worth in comparison with our lives?"

"I beg your pardon," said Fritz humbly, always ready to acknowledge when he was in the wrong. "I spoke unthinkingly; besides, if we lose these, we've got plenty more under the cliff by our hut."

"Aye, if we ever reach there!" replied Eric grimly. Although taking advantage of every possible device to reach the island again, as a sailor he was fully conscious of the dire peril they were in. "Now, Fritz," he called out presently, as a big white wave came up astern, "cut away the painter, and just give a hoist to the jib and belay the end of the halliards, half-way up. There, that will do. Lie down for the present, old fellow. The wind has reached us at last; so, it's a case of neck or nothing now!"

Hardly had Eric uttered the last words, when a sudden rush of wind struck the boat's stern like a flail, seeming to get underneath and lift it out of the water. The next instant the little craft sank down again as if she were going to founder stern foremost; but, at the same moment, the wind, travelling on, caught the half-set jib, and blowing this out with a sound like the report of a cannon, the small sail soon began to drive the boat through the swelling waves at racing speed.

Onward speeded the boat, faster and yet faster. Fortunately, the mast was a strong spar, or otherwise it would have broken off like a carrot; as, even with the half-hoisted jib, it bent like a whip, thus yielding to the motion of the little craft as she rose from the trough of the sea and leaped from one wave crest to another. The boat appeared just to keep in advance of the following rollers that vainly endeavoured to overtake her, and only broke a yard or so behind her stern--which, on account of her being a whale-boat, was built exactly like her bows and thus offered a smaller target for the billows to practise on, as they sent their broken tops hurtling after her in a shower of thick foam.

Eric had an oar out to leeward steering, while Fritz crouched down amidships, with the belayed end of the jib halliards in his hand, ready to let them go by the run when his brother gave the word; and, as the boat tore on through the water like a mad thing, the darkness around grew thicker and thicker, until all they could distinguish ahead was the sc.r.a.p of white sail in the bows and the occasional sparkle of surf as a roller broke near them.

Should they not be able to see where they were going, they might possibly be dashed right on to the island in the same way as they had seen the unfortunate brig destroyed. It was a terrible eventuality to consider!

Presently, however, the moon rose; and, although the wind did not abate its force one jot, nor did the sea subside, still, it was more consoling to see where they were going than to be hurled on destruction unawares.

Eric was peering out over the weather side of the boat, when, all of a sudden, on the starboard bow, he could plainly distinguish the island, looking like a large heavy flat ma.s.s lifting itself out of the sea.

"There it is!" he cried out to Fritz, who at once looked up, rising a little from the thwart on which he had been lying.

"Where?"

"To your right, old fellow; but, still ahead. Now, we must see whether we can make the boat go our way, instead of her own. Do you think you could manage to haul up the jib by yourself? Take a half-turn round one of the thwarts with the bight of the halliards, so that it shall not slip."

Fritz did what was requested; when Eric, keeping the boat's head off the wind, sang out to his brother to "hoist away."

The effect was instantaneous, for the boat quivered to her keel, as if she had sc.r.a.ped over a rock in the ocean, and then made a frantic plunge forwards that sent her bows under.