instead of running parallel with the Massachusetts
coast as had been at first the fact.

How fast I was traveling I could not guess. There was a patent log
aboard; but I did not rig it. Indeed, it was much safer to remain in the
stern of the sloop than to move about at all. I knew we were traveling
much faster than I had ever traveled by water before and I had something
beside the speed of my involuntary voyage to think about.

It had not crossed my mind at the time, but when I had slipped out to
the Wavecrest that evening, giving my mother and the servants the
impression that I had gone to my room as usual, I had done a very
foolish--if not wrong--thing. The sloop might not be the only craft in
Bolderhead Harbor to break away from moorings and go on an involuntary
cruise. Other wandering craft might not escape the rocks about the
beach, as the Wavecrest had. It might be supposed that my sloop was
among the wreckage that would be cast ashore along our rocky coast, and
my absence might not be connected with the disappearance of the sloop.

My mother and friends would not suspect the reason or cause for my
absence. If I had taken a soul into my confidence, in the morning my
mother would be informed immediately of my accident. Perhaps, after all,
it was not a bad thing that some uncertainty must of necessity attach
itself to my disappearance.

For although I had every reason to believe that Paul Downes had either
nailed me into the cabin, or caused me to be nailed in, well knowing
that I had gone aboard the sloop to sleep, I was equally confident that
he would not tell of what he had done, or allow his companions to tell
of the trick, either.

These, and similar hazy thoughts regarding my condition, shuttled back
and forth through my brain during the long and anxious hours of that
never-to-be-forgotten night. Sometimes, I presume, I lost myself and
slept for a few minutes; but the hours dragged on so dismally, and I was
so uncomfortable and anxious, that I am sure I could not have slept
much of the time. And it did seem as though the east would never lighten
for dawn.

At last it came, however; and then I liked the prospect less than the no
prospect of the black night! All that it revealed to my aching eyes was
a vast, vast expanse of empty, heaving drab sea, across which the gale
hurried sheets of cold and biting rain--not a sign of land behind
me--not a sail against the equally drab horizon. My sloop, under her
b