All the sleepers started up.

"Long-boat not in sight!"

It was too true. The ocean was blank. Not a sail, large or small, in
sight.

Many voices spoke at once.

"He has carried on till he has capsized her."

"He has given us the slip."

Unwilling to believe so great a calamity, every eye peered and stared all
over the sea. In vain. Not a streak that could be a boat's hull, not a
speck that could be a sail.

The little cutter was alone upon the ocean. Alone, with scarcely two
days' provisions, nine hundred miles from land, and four hundred miles to
leeward of the nearest sea-road.

Hazel, seeing his worst forebodings realized, sat down in moody, bitter,
and boding silence.

Of the other men some raged and cursed. Some wept aloud.

The lady, more patient, put her hands together and prayed to Him who made
the sea and all that therein is. Yet her case was the cruelest. For she
was by nature more timid than the men, yet she must share their desperate