ready, the young man went over the side, and descended, with a
reluctance he could not conceal, into the boat. Certainly, it was no
trifling matter for men in the situation of our two mariners, to leave
their vessel all alone, to be absent for a large portion of the day. It
was to be done, however; though it was done reluctantly, and not without
many misgivings, in spite of the favourable signs in the atmosphere.

When Mark had taken his seat in the dingui, Bob let go his hold of the
ship, and set the sail. The breeze was light, and fair to go, though it
was by no means so certain how it would serve them on the return.
Previously to quitting the ship, Mark had taken a good look at the
breakers to leeward, in order to have some general notion of the course
best to steer, and he commenced his little voyage, but entirely without
a plan for his own government. The breakers were quite as numerous to
leeward as to windward, but the fact of there being so many of them made
smooth water between them. A boat, or a ship, that was once fairly a
league or so within the broken lines of rocks, was like a vessel
embayed, the rollers of the open ocean expending their force on the
outer reefs, and coming in much reduced in size and power. Still the
uneasy ocean, even in its state of rest, is formidable at the points
where its waters meet with rocks, or sands and the breakers that did
exist, even as much embayed as was the dingui, were serious matters for
so small a boat to encounter. It was necessary, consequently, to steer
clear of them, lest they should capsize, or fill, this, the only craft
of the sort that now belonged to the vessel, the loss of which would be
a most serious matter indeed.

The dingui slided away from the ship with a very easy movement. There
was just about as much wind as so small a craft needed, and Bob soon
began to sound, Mark preferring to steer. It was, however, by no means