ning our aching eyes in every direction, and still in vain.

At last it became evident that we had in some manner drifted completely
away from the island. The appalling conviction could no longer be
resisted. There we were, lost and helpless, on the open ocean, in our
chip of a boat, without provisions for a single day, or, to speak more
definitely, without a morsel of bread or a drop of water.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE CONSULTATION.

OUT OF SIGHT OF LAND--SLENDER RESOURCES--WHAT'S TO BE DONE?

"How rapidly, how rapidly, we ride along the sea!
The morning is all sunshine, the wind is blowing free;
The billows are all sparkling, and bounding in the light,
Like creatures in whose sunny veins, the blood is running bright."

Morton alone still refused to relinquish the hope, that by broad
daylight, we should yet be able to make out the island. He persisted in
pronouncing it wholly incredible that we had made during the night, a
distance sufficient to sink the land, which was but three or four miles
off at the utmost, when we were overtaken by darkness; he could not
understand, he said, how such a thing was possible.

Arthur accounted for it, by supposing that we had got into the track of
one of the ocean currents that exist in those seas, especially among the
islands, many of which run at the rate of from two to three miles an
hour.

This seemed the more probable, from the fact, that we were to the west
of the island, when we lost sight of it, and that the great equatorial
current, which traverses the Pacific and Indian oceans, has a prevailing
westerly course, though among the more extensive groups and clusters of
islands, it is so often deflected hither and thither, by the obstacles
which it encounters, or turned upon itself, in eddies or
counter-currents, that no certain calculations can be made respecting
it. Morton, however, did not consider this supposition sufficient to
explain the difficulty.

"I should judge," said he, "that in a clear day, such an island might be
seen fifteen or twenty miles, and we cannot have drifted so great a
distance."

"It might perhaps be seen," said Arthur, "as far as that, from the
mast-head of a ship, or even from her deck, but not from a small boat
hardly raised above the surface of the water. At our present level,
eight or ten miles would be enough to sink it completely."

At length, when it was broad day, and from the appearance of the eastern
sky, the sun w