Here was Señor Sarpinto's chance come at last then, to delay the voyage for a short time.
He could never think of leaving his good brig and his faithful skipper, so he told Cawdor; but the captain really could not help perceiving that it mattered very little to the señor where the Resolute was. So he told him.
"Ah! then," was the reply, "for courtesy and politeness' sake we will lie to for some days till she comes up. Or we will creep around and look for her."
But the Resolute never appeared.
The waiting for her, however, led to events that were indeed but little looked for, as we shall presently see.
CHAPTER XIX.
A FAIRY ISLE—THE LOST BOAT.
Not a breath of wind, not a sigh came over the sea. Never a cloud as big even as a man's hand in all the bright steel-blue of heaven's great dome, only the slightest pearly haze lying low on the horizon wherever one might look, and all between the glittering sun-kissed ocean.
It was no dead ocean this, however, on which our heroes, leaning over the bulwarks and talking almost in whispers, were gazing. No, the great sea was not dead, but sleeping. Note the gentle heaving of its placid bosom, rising and falling as if 'twere imbued with the breath of life. The white-winged sea-gulls that float on the water seem to have been lulled to sleep, too, by that swelling motion. Even the ship herself nods drowsily to and fro, and the useless sails half fill and flap to every dip of the masts.
Yes, the surface of the sea is all a-glitter in the sun's rays; but it is not the sheen that sailors love, the reflection is like that from polished pewter, and forebodes either a long dead calm, or a sudden storm coming in a direction no man can even guess at.