tance we've run, by dead reckoning, as about
another fifty miles or so?"

"Yes, sor. The bo'sun hove the log ivery half hour till the engines
stopped, an' he made out we were going sixteen knots an' more, bedad, so
he s'id, whin we were running before the wind with full shtame on."

"That was very likely, O'Neil," replied the skipper, "but, after that,
we altered course again, you know!"

"In course we did, sor, an' you'll say it marked roight down there on
that line! We thin sailed west, a quarter south by compass, close-
hauled on the starboard track, for two hours longer after you altered
course ag'in an' bore up to the west'ard, keeping on till the ingines
bhroke down, bad cess to 'em!"

"When was that?" asked the skipper slowly. "I was so worried and
flurried at the moment that I forgot to take the time."

"Four bells in the first watch, sor," replied the Irishman quickly. "It
was after we'd brought up poor Jackson from below, as Stoddart, the
engineer, faith, was a sittin' near, jist before me, attindin' on the
poor chap in the cabin, whin the rush of shtame came flyin' up the
hatchway, faith, an' the sekrew stopped. We both of us looked at the
saloon clock on the instant, sure, an' saw the toime, sor."

"That is the last mark on the chart, then?" said the old skipper
meaningly, pencil and compass in hand, and still bending over the tell-
tale track map spread out on the wheel-house table. "Since that, nobody
knows how we've drifted!"

"Faith, no one, sor," returned Garry O'Neil, thinking the question was
addressed to him. "Only, perhaps, the Pope, God bless him, or the
Imporor of Chainy!"

All laughed at this, Captain Applegarth now losing his preoccupied air
as if there were nothing to be gained, he thought, by dwelling any
longer on the past.

It was wonderful, though, how we _had_ drifted in the short interval,
comparatively, that had elapsed since we became disabled!

As Mr Fosset had been the first to find out in the morning the Gulf
Stream--that great river that runs a course of some two thousand miles
in the middle of the ocean, keeping itself perfectly distinct from the
surrounding water through which it flows, from its inception as a
current in the Caribbean Sea to its final disposal in the North
Atlantic--had first carried us in an easterly direction after we had
broken-down so utterly; while the strong nor'-westerly gale, aided
probably by the Arctic current, running due south from t