“That isn’t the question,” Bert cried impatiently. “It’s up to us to find out where, if we can,” and once more the search was begun.
Five minutes more of frantic search brought no reward. The fellows, now thoroughly panic-stricken, stood and looked into each other’s pale faces, trying to imagine what had happened.
“He must be somewhere on the ship,” Martin persisted, desperately. “Nothing else is possible.”
The startling news had been carried to Captain Everett and his voice could now be heard giving orders for a most thorough search of the ship. This was done but still without avail.
At this report their last hopes were dissipated and all were forced to believe that in some mysterious way Drake had accidentally fallen overboard. At this solution of the mystery every heart was filled with frantic grief, for Drake was loved by all. Then they all felt an almost irresistible impulse to fling themselves overboard and drag him somewhere, somehow, from that sea of death.
“If he has fallen overboard,” Axtell said with a choke in his voice, “he’ll have no chance at all.”
“Oh,” Tom cried, throwing himself down in a chair, “poor, poor old Drake; and we are so powerless to help him.”
“There’s one chance left,” Reddy comforted, striving to bring back a spark of hope to their despairing hearts. “He’s right in the steamer lane and one of them may pick him up.”
Eagerly they clutched at this one straw held out to them and hope was further strengthened by the fact that the Northland had turned and, with all steam on, was retracing her course. A faint hope, at best, they knew, for even if his splendid strength had held out till then, how could such a small speck as he must seem on that boundless ocean, be sighted from the deck of a steamer? Then, too, the Northland could not retrace her course exactly and the currents might have carried the poor castaway far adrift. A forlorn hope indeed!