d served us so
well; and, this done, we settled down to wait for our dinner and the
breeze that promised to come ere long.

CHAPTER FIVE.

WE PROCEED IN SEARCH OF THE ALTHEA'S BOATS.

He wind came away about an hour and a half before sunrise, a gentle
breeze out from the north-east, coming down to us first of all in the
form of a few wandering cats'-paws, that just wrinkled the oil-smooth
surface of the ocean and were gone again, and finally settling into a
true breeze that fanned us along at a speed of some four knots, the
schooner proving to be a fairly speedy little vessel.

Long ere this, however, I had carefully thought out a line of action for
myself, in order that when the wind came I might be prepared for it. It
will be remembered that before parting company with the launch I had
been furnished by the master with a table showing the relative speeds of
the various boats, and from that moment I had, with the assistance of
the table, carefully calculated the supposed position of each boat at
noon; so that I now knew, to within a few miles, where any particular
boat ought to be looked for, upon the assumption that all had gone well
with them. And somehow I thought it had; I was very strongly impressed
with the belief that the gale which we had encountered had not extended
far enough to the south-east to reach the launch and the rest of the
squadron. Flowers it _might_ have overtaken, but my observations upon
the bearings of the centre of the storm and its direction led me to
entertain a very strong hope that the rest of the boats had escaped.
This being so, I determined to act upon the assumption that they had
done so, and to proceed in search of them in the direction where they
ought, upon that assumption, to be found. Of course, with their
different rates of sailing, they would now be strung out in a fairly
long line; and the question that exercised me most strongly was whether
I should first seek the leading boat, and, having found her, dodge about
in waiting for the others, or whether I should first seek the dinghy,
and, having found her, run down the wind in the track of the others.
The direction from which the wind might happen to spring up would
necessarily influence my decision to a great extent; but when it came
away out from the north-east, and I discovered that the schooner could
fetch, upon an easy bowline, the spot where the sternmost boat might be
expected to be found, I hesitated no longer