“Very, my lad. You see that she is out of sight.”
“And suppose we have lost sight of her altogether, sir—what then?”
“What then? Oh, don’t let’s calculate upon things that are barely possible. Captains in Her Majesty’s service are too particular about their juniors and ship’s company to leave a boat’s crew in the lurch.”
“Yes, but Captain Maitland might not be able to find us again, sir.”
“Come, come, my lad, don’t croak like a raven. At your age you ought to be hopeful, and set me an example of high spirits. Don’t begin imagining the worst.”
“Who’s going to be hopeful,” muttered Tom Fillot to the man behind him, “with the body o’ that poor nigger aboard? Strikes me that we’re in for a spell o’ bad luck, mates.”
“What’s that?” cried the lieutenant.
“Only having a bit of a grumble, your honour, about our luck,” said the man, respectfully. “We’re all feeling as if it was time our watch ended, and as though we’d like a bit o’ something to eat and drink. That’s all, sir.”
The man’s oar dipped steadily as he spoke, and after that there was a dead silence on board. The last drop of water had been swabbed up and squeezed overboard, and the exercise had helped to dry the men’s saturated garments. A steady progress was kept up, and after fighting back a heavy, drowsy feeling, Mark sat watching the setting stars away straight before him in the direction in which the Nautilus had disappeared. Twenty times over it had seemed to him as if the night would never end, and in spite of his officer’s cheering utterances, his spirits sank very low, as he wondered whether it would not have been better if the boat’s head had been turned, so that they might have rowed due east, to make the land from which they had sailed.
Then the moon began to sink lower, and the sky to grow of a darker slaty colour, while the regular beat of the men’s oars sounded distant—then very softly—and then ceased altogether, or so it appeared to Mark Vandean, who suddenly opened his eyes with a start, and gazed wonderingly about him at the sunlit sea, now all orange and gold.