The Castaways of the Flag Read Free Page B

you see?"
     
                "If I'm
not mistaken, a kind of rift, like a belt, on the water-line."
     
                Unmistakably
there was a lighter line along the horizon in that direction. Sky and sea could
be distinguished with more definiteness. It was as if a rent had just been made
in the dome of mist and vapour.
     
                "It's
wind!" the boatswain declared.
     
                "Isn't
it only the first beginning of daybreak?" the passenger asked.
     
                "It
might be daylight, though it's very early for it," John Block replied,
"and again it might be a breeze! I felt something of it in my beard just
now, and look!—it's twitching still! I'm aware it's not a breeze to fill the
top-gallant sails, but anyhow it's more than we've had for the last four and
twenty hours. Put your hand to your ear, Mr. Fritz, and listen; you'll hear
what I heard."
     
                "You are
right," said the passenger, leaning over the gunwale; "it is the
breeze."
     
                "And
we're ready for it," the boatswain replied, "with the foresail block
and tackle. We've only got to haul the sheet taut to save all the wind which is
rising."
     
                "But
where will it take us?"
     
                "Wherever
it likes," the boatswain answered; "all I want it to do is to blow us
out of these cursed waters!''
     
                Twenty
minutes went by. The breath of wind, which at first was almost imperceptible,
grew stronger. The rippling aft became louder. The boat made a few rougher
motions, not caused by the slow, nauseating swell. Folds of the sail spread
out, fell flat, and opened again, and the sheet sagged against its cleats. The
wind was not strong enough yet to fill the heavy canvas of the foresail and the
jib. Patience was needed, while the boat's head was kept to her course as well
as might be by means of one of the sculls.
     
                A quarter of
an hour later, progress was marked by a light wake.
     
                Just at this
moment one of the passengers who had been lying in the bows got up and looked
at the rift in the clouds to the eastward.
     
                "Is it a
breeze?" he asked.
     
                '' Yes,''
John Block answered. ''1 think we have got it this time, like a bird in the
hand— and we won't let go of it!"
     
                The wind was
beginning to spread steadily now through the rift, through which, too, the
first gleams of light must come. From southeast to south-west, the clouds still
hung in heavy masses, over three-quarters of the circumference of the sky. It
was still impossible to see more than a few cables' lengths from the boat, and
beyond that distance no ship could have been detected.
     
                As the breeze
had freshened, the sheet had to be hauled in, the foresail, whose gear was
slackened, hoisted, and the course veered a point or two, so as to give the jib
a hold on the wind.
     
                "We've
got it; we've got it!" the boatswain said cheerily, and the boat, heeling
gently over to starboard, dipped her nose into the first waves.
     
                Little by
little the rent in the clouds grew bigger and spread overhead. The sky assumed
a reddish hue. It seemed that the wind might hold to the present quarter for
some little time, and that the period of calms had come to an end.
     
                Hope of
reaching land revived once more, or the alternative hope of falling in with a
ship.
     
                At five
o'clock the rent in the clouds was ringed with a collar of vivid coloured
clouds. It was the day, appearing with the suddenness peculiar to the low
latitudes of the tropical regions. Soon purple rays of light arose above the
horizon, like the sticks of a fan. The rim of the solar disc, heightened by the
refraction, touched the horizon line, drawn