his setting, and glowed,
a great, palpitating disk of incandescent red, through a thin veil of
innumerable small, closely clustering clouds that stretched in gorgeous
tints of gold, crimson, and purple against a background of very pale
green, right athwart the horizon ahead, their colours being brilliantly
reflected in the softly rippling, slowly moving undulations that came
creeping up after us, heaving us gently up on their ample breasts and
then sweeping on ahead of us straight toward the sinking luminary. The
wind had just strength enough in it to keep the sheet of our single lug
from sagging into the water, and the gig was sliding smoothly along,
with the small sound of lapping, gurgling water under her, at the rate
of about three knots in the hour, leaving behind her a thin, swirling
wake of small bubbles and tiny whirlpools that vanished upon the breast
of the next on-coming swell. The longboat, under fore and main standing
lugs and a small jib, deeply loaded as she was, was doing a knot less
than ourselves, and we soon passed and slid ahead of her; while away
down in the north-eastern board, broad on our starboard quarter, the
topsails and upper canvas of the barque shone primrose-yellow above the
ridges of the swell as she stood away from us, heading about
nor'-north-east, close-hauled on the starboard tack.

There was every prospect that we were about to have a fine night, almost
too fine, in fact, to suit us: for although light winds meant smooth
water, which in its turn meant safety for deeply laden open boats, we
had a long road before us and not too many provisions or too much water
for our sustenance during our journey; and for my own part, if I could
have had my choice, I would have preferred a little more wind, provided
that it was fair--even although it involved a somewhat heavier sea--to
help us on our way.

CHAPTER THREE.

WE START OUR VOYAGE IN THE GIG.

The first matter to which I gave consideration, after we were fairly
under way, and had parted company with the longboat, was that of food
and drink; and I began by taking stock roughly of what we had, and
jotting down the items in my pocket-book. To begin with, we had four
five-gallon breakers of fresh water--twenty gallons in all. Then we had
two sacks of cabin bread, which, by a partial count, I estimated to
contain about three hundred biscuits altogether. And in addition to
these we had one dozen tins of ox tongue; six small tins o