was
slow and the means of restoration limited.

The occupants of the derelict had settled down to a dull, almost dogged
state of resignation. There were several deaths and burials, incidents
that made but little impression on the waiting, watchful survivors. Each
succeeding day brought forth additional watchers to swell the anxious
throng,--resolute and sometimes ungovernable men who, defying their
wounds and the nurses, refused to stay where they could not have a hand
in all that was going on.

Back of all this pitiful courage, however, lurked the unholy fear that
they might be left to their fate in case the ship had to be hurriedly
abandoned.

Mr. Mott watched the weather. Every seaman on board the Doraine scanned
the cloudless sky with searching, anxious eyes. They sniffed the steady
wind that blew them farther south. Always they scanned the sky and
sniffed the wind.

"It's got to come sometime," repeated Captain Trigger, after each report
from Mr. Mott.

"I've known weather like this to last for weeks," said the First
Officer.

"In the South Pacific, yes," said the Captain grimly. "But we're in the
South Atlantic, Mott."

On the sixth day the barometer began to fall. The breeze stiffened.
The sea became choppy, and white-caps danced fitfully over the greenish
stretches, growing wilder and wilder under the whip of a flouting wind.
The two patchwork sails on the lumbering Doraine flapped noisily for
awhile, as if shaking off their tor-por, then suddenly grew taut and
fat with prosperity. The twisted, half-jammed rudder,--far from worthy
despite the efforts of its repairers,--whiningly obeyed the man at
the wheel, and once more the ship felt the caress of the deep on her
cleaving bows.

The horizon to the north and west seemed to draw nearer, the contrast
between the deepening blue of the water and the clear azure of the
contracting dome more sharply defined. The sky that had been cloudless
for days still remained barren, but the sailor knew what lay beyond the
clear-cut rim of the world. The man of the sea could look far beyond the
horizon. He could see the ugly clouds that were even now speeding down
from the north, invisible as yet but soon to creep into view; he could
see the mighty billows on the other side of that distant line; he could
hear the roar and shriek of the tempest that was still hundreds of
miles away. It was the matter of but a few hours before the wind and the
billows would rush up to s