The Argosy, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

138 THE MUTINY ON THE FLYING CLOUD. to steer his course ; for, though he had a compass on board the raft, he had no binnacle and no lamps by which to illuminate the compass card. It is true the island was still in sight, some four miles astern, but the night had grown so dark and the atmosphere so thick, that the land merely loomed like a vast undefined blot of darkness against the black horizon, being so in- distinct, indeed, that only the practiced eye of a seaman could have detected its presence at all; it was therefore almost useless as an object to steer by. It had by this time begun to dawn upon the skipper that his adventure was likely to prove of a far more serious character than he had at all con- templated ; and he was earnestly debating with himself the question whether his wisest course would not, after all, be to abandon the chase and make the best of his way back to the island, when the breeze once more freshened up so strongly, and that, too, dead.aft, that it made everything on board the raft surge again as she gathered way and skimmed off before it. Blake, calculating that even if the chase were sailing away from instead of toward him, it would shorten his distance from her at least a couple of miles before she caught it, grimly held on his course, determined to risk everything rather than lose so good a chance ; his chief fear now being that the sheet would part under the tremendous strain brought to bear upon it by ‘the im- mense sail. | The raft, as has been elsewhere stated, was of very peculiar construction, her shape and build being such as to peculiarly favor speed, especially when running dead before the wind. Light as she now was, she skimmed away before the fierce squall at a rate which made Blake’s heart bound with exultation as he looked first to one side and then the other and noted the furious speed with which the phosphorescent foam from under her bows was left behind. There was now no longer any thought of turning back, for Captain Blake had by this time arrived at a firm conviction, first, that it was by the special intervention of Providence that he had been led to undertake his fishing ex- cursion that night, and next, that the freshening up of a dead fair wind just when it did was a second special intervention of Providence to prevent his giving up the chase. ? And so he held on everything, and the raft rushed away dead -before the wind through the pitchy darkness, the mast creaking ominously in its step every now and then, and the tautly strained gear aloft surging from time to time in an equally ominous manner. The sea rose rapidly—showing that the solitary voyager was fast drawing out from under the sheltering lee of the island astern—and the foaming wave crests, vividly phosphorescent, momentarily towered, higher and more threat- eningly, and hissed louder and more angrily in the luminous wake of the flying craft. | CHAPTER XXVI.—THE Storm BREAKS. THE squall lasted a full hour, when the wind died away even more sud- denly than it had arisen, and the raft was left tumbling about with little more than steerage way upon her. (0) =} <S 51 80K) \ eee ee ee A Lee ey Pee eee TaN TD, ‘ 3 3