was never destined to
sight again.

CHAPTER VI

DAWN ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA

"Is it aslape I've been?" said Mr Button, suddenly awaking with a start.

He had shipped his oars just for a minute's rest. He must have slept
for hours, for now, behold, a warm, gentle wind was blowing, the moon
was shining, and the fog was gone.

"Is it dhraming I've been?" continued the awakened one.

"Where am I at all, at all? O musha! sure, here I am. O wirra! wirra! I
dreamt I'd gone aslape on the main-hatch and the ship was blown up with
powther, and it's all come true."

"Mr Button!" came a small voice from the stern-sheets (Emmeline's).

"What is it, honey?"

"Where are we now?"

"Sure, we're afloat on the say, acushla; where else would we be?"

"Where's uncle?"

"He's beyant there in the long-boat--he'll be afther us in a minit."

"I want a drink."

He filled a tin pannikin that was by the beaker of water, and gave her
a drink. Then he took his pipe and tobacco from his coat pocket.

She almost immediately fell asleep again beside Dick, who had not
stirred or moved; and the old sailor, standing up and steadying
himself, cast his eyes round the horizon. Not a sign of sail or boat
was there on all the moonlit sea.

From the low elevation of an open boat one has a very small horizon,
and in the vague world of moonlight somewhere round about it was
possible that the boats might be near enough to show up at daybreak.

But open boats a few miles apart may be separated by long leagues in
the course of a few hours. Nothing is more mysterious than the currents
of the sea.

The ocean is an ocean of rivers, some swiftly flowing, some slow, and a
league from where you are drifting at the rate of a mile an hour
another boat may be drifting two.

A slight warm breeze was frosting the water, blending moonshine and
star shimmer; the ocean lay like a lake, yet the nearest mainland was
perhaps a thousand miles away.

The thoughts of youth may be long, long thoughts, but not longer than
the thoughts of this old sailor man smoking his pipe under the stars.
Thoughts as long as the world is round. Blazing bar rooms in
Callao--harbours over whose oily surfaces the sampans slipped like
water-beetles--the lights of Macao--the docks of London. Scarcely ever
a sea picture, pure and simple, for why should an old seaman care to
think about the sea, where life is all into the fo'cs'le and out again,
where one voyage blends and jumble