us some time or other this voyage. Even started on a
Friday, sir, as you knows on, sir!"

"Rubbish!" cried the skipper, angry at his obstinacy. "See, the mirage
has disappeared now that the meteor light has become dispersed. Look
smart there, aloft, and furl that topsail! It's just seven bells and
I'm going to ease down the engines and bear up on our course again. Up
with you, men, and lay out on the yard!"

The hands who had stopped half-way up the fore-rigging, spell-bound at
the sight of the mirage, now bestirred themselves, shaking off their
superstitious fears; old Masters, in the presence of something to be
done, also working, and soon the sail was furled, the bunt stowed, and
the gaskets passed.

"It's no use our keeping on any longer after that ship of yours,
Haldane," observed the skipper, turning to me when the men had all come
in from the topsail yard and scrambled down on deck again after making
everything snug aloft. "If she were still afloat we must have
overhauled her before this. I really think, youngster, she must have
been only a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, like that we saw just now--an
optical illusion, as I told you at the time, recollect, caused by some
cross light from the afterglow of the sunset thrown upon the white mist
which we noticed subsequently rising off the water. Eh, my boy?"

"Ah, no, captain," I replied earnestly. "The ship I saw presented a
very different appearance to that reflection of ours! _She_ was full-
rigged, I told you, sir, and though her canvas was torn and she looked a
bit knocked about in the matter of her tophamper, she was as unlike our
old _Star of the North_ as a sailing vessel is unlike a steamer!"

"She might have been a derelict."

"I saw a girl on her deck aft, sir, with a dog beside her, as distinctly
as I see you, sir, now!"

"Well, well, be that as it may, my lad, though I'm very sorry for the
poor young thing, if she is still in the land of the living, I can't
carry on like this for ever! If she were anywhere in sight it would be
quite another matter; but, as it is, not knowing whether we're on her
right track or not, we might scud on to the Equator without running
across her again. No, no; it wouldn't be fair to the owners or to
ourselves, indeed, to risk the ship as well as the lives of all on board
by continuing any longer on such a wild-goose chase."

"Very good, sir," said I, on his pausing here, as if waiting for me to
say something.