At noon the sea was green in places.
Welch told them this was a sign they were nearing land.
At four P.M. a bird, about the size and color of a woodpecker, settled on the boat's mast.
Their glittering eyes fastened on it; and Welch said, "Come, there's a supper for you as you can eat it."
"No, poor thing!" said Helen Rolleston.
"You are right," said Hazel, with a certain effort of self-restraint. "Let our sufferings make us gentle, not savage. That poor bird is lost like us upon this ocean. It is a land-bird."
"How do you know?"
"Water-birds have webbed feet—to swim with." The bird, having rested, flew to the northwest.
Helen, by one of those inspired impulses her sex have, altered the boat's course directly, and followed the bird.
Half an hour before sunset, Helen Rolleston, whose vision was very keen, said she saw something at the verge of the horizon, like a hair standing upright.