and at ten o'clock that same evening, when Captain
Blyth entered the saloon, after personally superintending the setting of
the topgallant-sails, he announced not only that there was every
prospect of a fine night and a steady breeze, but also that he believed
they had caught the south-east trades.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE DERELICT BARQUE.

The next morning demonstrated the correctness of Captain Blyth's
surmise; for daylight found them with the breeze still steady at about
east by south, and so fresh that they were compelled to keep all their
skysails and the mizen-royal stowed. Needless to say, everybody was
delighted at having slipped through the Doldrums so easily; even the
chief-mate almost allowed himself now and then to be betrayed into an
expression of dawning amiability; and, as for Captain Blyth, his
exuberance of spirits threatened at times to pass all bounds. He
believed it quite impossible that the _Southern Cross_ could now cross
the line in less than three days, at least, after himself; and the way
in which the _Flying Cloud_, against a fair amount of head sea and on a
taut bowline, was steadily reeling off her eight, nine, and sometime
even ten knots per hour, with her really extraordinary weatherliness,
quite convinced him that he could beat his antagonist in any weather
which would permit him to show his topgallant-sails to it.

This state of general satisfaction and good humour was at its height,
when about ten o'clock on that same morning, a man who was at work on
the weather fore-topsail-yard-arm hailed the deck with:

"On deck, there! There is a wreck, or something like it, broad on our
weather-beam, and about nine mile off."

Captain Blyth was on deck, and so was Ned; and the skipper immediately
ordered that young gentleman to go aloft with his glass to see if he
could make out the object.

Ned was soon in the main-topmast cross-trees, from which elevated stand-
point he was at once enabled to make out the whereabouts of the supposed
wreck with the naked eye, and he was not long in bringing his glass to
bear upon it.

"Well, Ned, my hearty," hailed the skipper, when the lad had been
working away in a puzzled manner with his telescope, "that you see
something is perfectly evident. What d'ye make her out to be?"

"It is not very easy to say, sir," replied Ned. "The light is so
dazzling in that quarter that I can see nothing but a dark patch; but it
looks more like a vessel on her bea