"A bone?" repeated Morley.
"Yes; the spray flying under her cutwater, and over her catheads. Don't you remember the fun we used to have with De Vavasour Spout, the cockney supercargo, when talking all manner of nautical rubbish to him. Morrison, run up our ensign; lay the mainyard to the mast; steward, hand up the trumpet, we'll overhaul her."
The orders were promptly obeyed; the stranger also backed his mainyard, and showed his ensign—black and white.
"Prussian," said Morrison.
"Bound for the Elbe," added Bartelot, whose hail was answered in a hoarse dissonance, that made even Noah Gawthrop's grim visage relax with a smile, as he sent the debris of his quid to leeward, and anathematised foreigners in general, and their Hugos in particular, while each vessel stood off on her course again.
"No chance for you, Morley," said Bartelot, "so we'll give it up and think no more about it."
Ten days elapsed after this, and, in all that space never once did the Princess come within hail of a homeward-bound ship, so Morley strove to resign himself to his fate.
"Rio de Janeiro be it," said he.
He took his watch with the rest of the crew, and endeavoured to make the time pass; but weary, weary was his lot for days and weeks—days and weeks of mental suffering, during which he fretted, chafed, and loathed, at times, the floating prison which bore him away, almost hopelessly, from the watery path which he now concluded Ethel must be traversing—she, due southward, towards the sun; and he, south-westward, towards the land of fire.
It is an age of swift postal arrangements, of telegrams, magnetic and electric, but nothing could avail Morley there on the wide, wide sea; the appliances of modern science were there as nugatory and of as little avail as in the days when Columbus ploughed the same waters in search of the western world—he had nothing to console him save patience and hope.