out of line before the service was ended, to
change back to the blue sailor shirt and working clothes. I felt that
I had been "putting on airs." It has been my first really blue day,
for the pictures in my mind of the Christmas festivities at home but
emphasized the desolation of the life here.

Strangely enough, Dr. Frank has seemed to a certain extent to be more
cheerful than usual. It seems queer that he, pessimist as he appeared
to me when he predicted disaster before we sailed from the Midway
Islands, should now be the optimist and attempt to dispel our gloom.
Some expert in psychical research may be able to discern, as I cannot,
why the doctor's belief in Talbot's success should now have influence
enough to change my melancholy into a firmer hope than ever.

We borrowed the chart from the captain and followed in pure
imagination the course of the gig; and when we folded it, the doctor
said that he believed Talbot had arrived at the end of his journey and
we should be relieved. Talbot has now been away thirty-seven days, and
our several estimates of the time he would consume have been between
thirty and forty.

Every afternoon, when work is suspended for the day and we have
repaired to the tent, the expression of Talbot's whereabouts is the
first note of discussion; as though it had not been in our minds all
the long weary day of work.

As the possible failure of Talbot's brave effort begins to enter our
calculations, the greater is the exertion to provide in the near
future another avenue of escape. So, with gradually weakened
strength, owing to lack of sustaining food, the labor we find arduous
and exhausting; I, being included in the carpenter's gang on the
schooner, realize that fact thoroughly. Yesterday the captain and
myself made another circuit of the island, and both were glad to rest
on the return to the camp.

The captain has ordered the cutter to be also fitted for a voyage to
the Midway Islands. There he intends to have a sign erected stating,
briefly, our situation; to serve in case the Navy Department should
send (as we expect it will) a searching vessel for us. Twice every day
I have climbed the rope ladder on the mast and searched with anxious
eyes through my rescued opera glasses the shipless horizon; sometimes
with such a strain of nerves and hope that phantom vessels plague my
vision. The loneliness and solitude of the vast expanse of water
surrounding us is beyond expression. Truly, it i