"Oh, this dreadful shipwreck! I wish I had stayed home!"
The others wished the same thing.
It was a night without hope, and the morning broke dull and gray, with the promise of a storm. The wind shifted from point to point until the castaways did not know in which direction they were going, for there was no sun to guide them. The leaky locker was tightly closed, so that there was no danger of the boat filling from it.
The amount of breakfast seemed woefully small to Bob, and he recalled with a start the wish Dent Freeman, the hired man, had expressed, that the boy who tormented him would have to eat seaweed.
"Perhaps I shall before we're through with this," said the lad to himself. "There isn't much more food left."
Still he did not complain, setting a good example in this respect to Mr. Tarbill, who did nothing but find fault, until Captain Spark ordered him to take an oar and with one of the sailors aid in propelling the boat, for the wind had suddenly died out.
For two days more they sailed or rowed on.
The weather continued unsettled, but fortunately not breaking into a storm. Sometimes there was a breeze, and again there was a dead calm, when they took turns at the oars. It was all guesswork as to whether or not they were headed for the island.
The food became less and less, until finally they were living on three dry biscuits a day each. The water, too, was getting lower and lower in the one cask that remained, and it had a warm, brackish taste. Still it was the most precious thing they possessed.
More and more worried became the look on Captain Spark's face. How anxiously each morning and a dozen times a day did he scan the horizon with his glasses for a sight of the island or a ship! But nothing was to be seen save the heaving billows.