ting
his head on his hands, with his elbows on the table.

"Poor Captain Sibley! He and those with him are gone, I fear. I would
have given all I possess to save him. A kinder-hearted man never
commanded a ship. His poor wife and children! And the second mate
gone! Only that rough diamond in charge, without men enough to handle
the ship. It will prove a very serious matter to us, I fear, young
gentlemen, even should we ride out the present gale and bad weather
continue."

"With our party of six we shall have no difficulty in managing the
ship," observed Tom. "My eldest messmate and I are thorough navigators;
and though we cannot assist in following up the object of the voyage, we
shall be able to take her into a port where she can obtain another
master, with more officers and men. I should propose steering for
Hong-kong, where we are certain to fall in with American merchantmen,
and probably a man-of-war; but, before we leave this neighbourhood, I
should wish to make a thorough search for the missing boats.
Notwithstanding what the boatswain says, I am not satisfied that they
are lost."

"Do you think it possible that they can have escaped?" asked the
surgeon, looking up.

"I think it possible, though I dare not say it is probable," answered
Tom. "They may have killed the whale and hung on under the lee of its
body, or they may have run before the wind and succeeded in reaching one
of the small islands to the eastward. The weather has been so thick
that they might easily have passed us without discovering our signals."

These remarks of Tom's greatly cheered the poor surgeon, who grieved for
the loss of his friend the captain, and he was also naturally very
anxious about his own fate.

"With any other man than Betts I should have less fear; but I know him
to be an obstinate, self-opinionated, unprincipled fellow, and very
ignorant at the same time," he observed. "If he were utterly ignorant
of navigation there would be less danger; but he knows something about
it, and has an idea that he is a first-rate navigator, and fully capable
of taking charge of the ship."

"We must take our observations and keep our reckoning carefully, and we
may then be able to correct his errors," said Tom.

As he spoke, a gruff voice was heard to exclaim, "What's that you say?"
and the boatswain, who had been standing at the door of the cabin,
walked in, casting furious glances at the doctor and the three
midshipmen.