It was now a race between starvation and drowning, and either way death stared them in the face.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE long-boat was, at this moment, a hundred miles to windward of the cutter.
The fact is that Wylie, the evening before, had been secretly perplexed as to the best course. He had decided to run for the island; but he was not easy under his own decision; and, at night, he got more and more discontented with it. Finally, at nine o'clock P.M., he suddenly gave the order to luff, and tack; and by daybreak he was very near the place where the Proserpine went down, whereas the cutter, having run before the wind all night, was, at least, a hundred miles to leeward of him.
Not to deceive the reader, or let him, for a moment, think we do business in monsters, we will weigh this act of Wylie's justly.
It was just a piece of iron egotism. He preferred, for himself, the chance of being picked up by a vessel. He thought it was about a hair's breadth better than running for an island, as to whose bearing he was not very clear, after all.
But he was not sure he was taking the best or safest course. The cutter might be saved, after all, and the long-boat lost.
Meantime he was not sorry of an excuse to shake off the cutter. She contained one man at least who knew he had scuttled the Proserpine; and therefore it was all-important to him to get to London before her and receive the three thousand pounds which was to be his reward for that abominable act.
But the way to get to London before Mr. Hazel, or else to the bottom of the Pacific before him, was to get back into the searoad at all hazards.