Strange measured his course.
"Five to five and a half hours forced draught."
"Good. Suppose we start at six this evening."
The Boulotte went away to the minute. At eight it began to grow dark, but no steaming light was hoisted on the mast, and no sidelamps betrayed her presence. In the failing light she became one with the sea but for the tiniest wisp of smoke from her chimney, and soon the night hid that. A lantern flashed for a while here and there on the forward deck in the centre of a little group, and then Slingsby came back to Strange at the wheel.
"It's all right," he whispered softly.
Nights at sea! The cool, dark tent of stars, the hiss and tinkle of waves against the boat's side, the dinghy, slung out upon the davits, progressing above the surface of the water, the lamp light from the compass striking up on the brasswork of the wheel and the face of the steersman; to nights at sea Strange owed all the spacious moments of his crippled life. But this night was a sacred thing. He was admitted to the band of the young strong men who serve, like a novice into the communion of a church; and his heart sang within his breast as he kept the Boulotte to her course. At a quarter past eleven he rang the telegraph and put the indicator to "slow." Five minutes later he stopped the engine altogether. Four miles away to the north-eastward a light brightened and faded.
"We are there," he said, and he looked out over an empty sea.
Under Slingsby's orders he steamed slowly round in a circle, ever increasing the circumference, for an hour, and then the new hand--who, by the way, was a master gunner--crept aft.
"There it is, sir."
A hundred yards from the port bow a dark mass floated on the sea. The Boulotte slid gently alongside of it. It was a raft made of barrels lashed together.