e southward, and in another hour his tiny
speck of canvas had vanished beyond the horizon. This left me free to
attend to my own necessities without further anxiety on the score of
being boarded; I therefore once more lashed the tiller in such a
position that the felucca would practically steer herself, and then,
having first taken a good look round, to see if anything was in sight,
proceeded below, found the chart which Dominguez had been using, and
ascertained the bearing and distance of the island of Barbadoes. A
careful study of this chart revealed the rather disconcerting fact that,
taking into consideration the circumstance that Barbadoes was to
windward, while Jamaica lay well to leeward of me, it would be almost as
quick to return to the latter as it would be to beat out to the former.
On the other hand, however, there was this to be taken into
consideration, that, on a wind, the felucca might be made to practically
steer herself, as I had already ascertained by experiment, while it was
quite certain that she could not be persuaded to do any such thing while
running _off_ the wind. Moreover, by ratching far enough to the
northward to enable the felucca to fetch Barbadoes on the next tack, I
should be stretching away in a fairly promising direction for being
picked up by one of the many British cruisers that were watching the
principal outlets from the Caribbean to the Atlantic. After mature
deliberation, therefore, I arrived at the conclusion that I could not do
better than adhere to my original determination of trying for Barbadoes.

The next question was, how I was to dispose of my time, or rather, what
portion of my time it would be best to devote to sleep. One fact stared
me in the face at the outset, namely, that until I was once more safe
ashore I should have to make shift with the smallest possible amount of
sleep, the care of the felucca calling for my almost constant attention;
consequently, I should have to so arrange my periods of rest that they
would coincide with the times when the felucca could best be left to
take care of herself. These periods would obviously occur during the
hours of daylight, when it would be possible to take a good look round,
and if nothing was in sight, or likely to approach within dangerous
proximity for an hour or two, lie down on deck in the shadow of the
sail, snatch a short nap, and then take another look round; repeating
the process as often as possible throughout