"Oh, yes, he would, just the same, Dan. We should know whether to go away from him, or to keep him on the right hand or on the left."
This was beyond Dan. "And I s'pose the moon will show de way at night, massa?"
"The moon would show the way if she were up, but she is not always up; but I have got a compass here, and so whether we have the sun or the moon, or neither of them, I can find my way back to land."
Dan had never seen a compass, and for an hour amused himself turning it round and round and trying to get it to point in some other direction than the north.
"Now, Dan," Vincent said at last, "give me that compass, and get out the food. We will have a better meal than we did this morning, for now that the wind is going down there's no chance of food running short. When we have had dinner we will get up the sail again. The sea is not so rough as it was, and it is certainly not so high as it was before we lowered the sail yesterday."
"De waves berry big, massa."
"They are big, Dan; but they are not so angry. The heads are not breaking over as they did last night, and the boat will go better over those long waves than she did through the choppy sea at the beginning of the gale."
Accordingly the bundle of spars was pulled up alongside and lifted. The mast was set up and the sail hoisted. Dan in a few minutes forgot his fears and lost even his sense of uneasiness as he found the boat mounted wave after wave without shipping water. Several times, indeed, a shower of spray flew high up in the air, but the gusts no longer buried her so that the water came over the gunwale, and it was a long time before there was any occasion to use the bailer. As the sun set it could be seen that there was a dark line between it and the water.
"There is the land, Dan; and I do not suppose it is more than twenty miles away, for most of the coast lies low."
"But how we find de York River, massa? Will de compass tell you dat?"