hat there were six whites living among
them, who had arrived there many years before, with the one who had just
perished, and had come from an uninhabited island to the southward, upon
which they had been wrecked.

During the night the wind continued fair, and animated by the hopes to
which the statements of the little native had given rise, we renewed our
watch, which had lately been discontinued, and sailed steadily
northward, cherishing a strong confidence that we should reach land
before morning.

The second watch--from a little after midnight to dawn--fell to me. As
it began to grow light I almost feared to look northward, dreading the
shock of a fresh disappointment, that must consign us again to the
benumbing apathy from which we had yesterday rallied.

There seemed to me to be something unusual in the atmosphere, that
impeded, or rather confused and bewildered the sight; and when the sun
rose, I had not made out anything like land. It was not mist or fog,
for the air was dry, and there were already indications of a fiercely
hot day, though it was yet fresh and cool. The sky above us, too, was
perfectly clear, all the clouds seemed to have slid down to the horizon,
along which a white army of them was marshalled, in rounded fleecy
masses, like Alpine peaks towering one above another, or shining
icebergs, pale and cold as those that drift in Arctic seas.

One by one my companions awoke to learn the failure, thus far, of all
the sanguine expectations of the preceding evening. The native boy
could suggest no reason why we had not reached the island, and when
questioned on the subject, and told that we had steered all through the
night by the "aveia," he merely shook his head with a bewildered and
hopeless look. Max, on perceiving that we were still out of sight of
land, threw himself down again in the bottom of the boat without
speaking a word, where he remained with his eyes closed as if sleeping.

Arthur, after some further conversation with the little islander, came
to the conclusion that in steering due north, we had not made sufficient
allowance for the strong current setting westward; and he proposed that
we should now sail directly east, to which no objection was made, most
of us having at last come to feel that it could matter little what
course we thenceforth steered. He accordingly took the direction of
things into his own hands: the wind, which had moderated, was still from
the west, and he put