e water; and, with a final caution to his comrade to keep close
to the spot where they were parting, he stretched out his muscular arms
to their full extent, and commenced surging through the water,--snorting
as he went like some huge cetacean of the tribe of the _Mysticeti_.

CHAPTER FORTY.

LAUNCHING THE LIFE-PRESERVER.

It is scarce necessary to say that, during all this time. Little
William, on board the _Catamaran_, was half wild with anxious thoughts.
He had obeyed the first instructions shouted to him by Ben Brace, and
taken to the steering-oar; but, after struggling for some time to get
the craft round, and seeing that his efforts were of no avail, he
dropped it to comply with the still later orders given by the sailor: to
let loose the halliards and lower the sail. Ben had wondered, and with
a slight feeling of chagrin, why this last order had not been
executed,--at least more promptly,--for at a later period he knew the
sail had been lowered; but Ben was of course ignorant of the cause of
the delay.

His conjecture, however, afterwards expressed, when he half-remembered
having put "a ugly knot on the haulyards"; which he, little William,
"maybe warn't able to get clear as fast as mout a been wished," was
perfectly correct; as was also the additional hypothesis that the sail
had been got down at last, "either by loosin' the belay or cuttin' the
piece o' rope."

The latter was in reality the mode by which the sailor-lad had succeeded
in lowering the sail.

As Ben had conjectured, the belaying loop had proved too much for the
strength of William's fingers; and, after several fruitless efforts to
untie the knot, he had at length given it up, and, seizing the axe, had
severed the halliard by cutting it through and through.

Of course the sail came down upon the instant; but it was then too late;
and when William again looked out over the ocean, he saw only the ocean
itself, with neither spot nor speck to break the uniformity of its
boundless bosom of blue.

In that glance he perceived that he was alone,--he felt for the first
time that he was alone upon the ocean!

The thought was sufficient to beget despair,--to paralyse him against
all further action; and, had he been a boy of the ordinary stamp, such
might have been the result. But he was not one of this kind. The
spirit which had first impelled him to seek adventure by sea, proved a
mind moulded for enterprise and action. It was not the sort