thrown together had necessarily been interrupted;
and as Miss Trevor did not appear to be very eager to renew it, Leslie
thought it best to maintain silence, in the hope that his companion
might be able to secure a little sleep.

Meanwhile, the fog had gradually been growing less dense, and within
about half an hour of the incident of the hencoops a few stars became
visible overhead. An hour later the fog had completely disappeared,
revealing a star-studded sky that spread dome-like and unbroken from
zenith to horizon.

To Leslie the night seemed interminable; but at length his anxious eyes
were gladdened by the appearance of a faint paling of the sky low down
on the horizon in the eastern quarter. Gradually and imperceptibly the
pallor spread right, left, and upward toward the zenith, until a broad
arch of it lay stretched along the horizon, within the limits of which
the stars one after another dwindled in brightness and presently
disappeared. Against this patch of pallor the heads of the running
surges rose and fell restlessly, black as ink; and once, as Leslie and
his companion were lifted on the top of the swell, the former thought he
caught sight, for a moment, of a small toy-like object in the far
distance. When next he was hove up he looked for it again, but for some
few minutes in vain. Then came another unusually lofty undulation that
for a moment lifted him high enough to render the horizon almost level,
with only an isolated ridge here and there to break its continuity; and
during that brief moment he once more caught sight of the object, and
knew that it was no figment of his imagination; on the contrary, it was
a clear and sharply defined image of the upper canvas--from the royals
down to the foot of the topsails--of a barque, steering south. She was,
of course, much too distant to be of any use to them, but her appearance
just then was encouraging, inasmuch as it confirmed his conviction that
they were fairly in the track of ships. He pointed the craft out to his
companion, and said what he could to raise her hopes; but by this time
the poor girl was beginning to feel so exhausted from her long exposure,
and the intense emotions that had preceded it, that he found his task
difficult almost to the point of impossibility.

During the brief period occupied by Leslie in watching the distant
barque and endeavouring to deduce from her appearance substantial
grounds for encouragement on the part of his