[CHAPTER XX]
DAYS OF SUFFERING
“Does she leak any?” asked Joe anxiously. He was up forward, attending to the sail, while Abe was at the helm.
“A few drops coming in,” replied the other sailor. “But nothing to speak of. She’ll swell up when she’s been in the water a while, and be as tight as a drum.”
“Good! We’ve got a right proper little boat, I’m thinking.”
“And she sails well, too,” declared Tom, observing the behavior of the craft with a critical glance. “She can go close to the wind, too, I believe.”
“Right you are, matie,” exclaimed Abe. “If we had a compass now we could lay as good a course as any ocean liner.”
But they did not have this aid to navigation, though the two sailors could manage to get along without it. They held a consultation, and decided that to steer in a general southwesterly direction would be the proper course.
“There’s islands there, if they’re anywhere,” declared Abe; “and there ought to be ships we could speak.”
“We ought to be somewhere near the equator, if the heat goes for anything,” declared Tom. In fact in the last few days the sun had become unbearably hot.