CHAPTER XI.
ROUGH WEATHER.
During the ensuing week nothing particular occurred on board. The breeze still freshened, and the "Pilgrim" made on the average 160 miles every twenty-four hours. The speed was as great as could be expected from a craft of her size.
Dick grew more and more sanguine in his anticipations that it could not be long before the schooner would cross the track of the mail-packets plying between the eastern and western hemispheres. He had made up his mind to hail the first passing vessel, and either to transfer his passengers, or what perhaps would be better still, to borrow a few sailors, and, it might be, an officer to work the "Pilgrim" to shore. He could not help, however, a growing sense of astonishment, when day after day passed, and yet there was no ship to be signalled. He kept the most vigourous look-out, but all to no purpose. Three voyages before had he made to the whale-fisheries, and his experience made him sure that he ought now to be sighting some English or American vessel on its way between the Equator and Cape Horn.
Very different, however, was the true position of the "Pilgrim" from what Dick supposed; not only had the ship been carried far out of her direct course by currents, the force of which there were no means of estimating, but from the moment when the compass had been tampered with by Negoro, the steering itself had put the vessel all astray.
Unconscious of both these elements of disturbance, Dick Sands was convinced that they were proceeding steadily eastwards, and was perpetually encouraging Mrs. Weldon and himself by the assurance that they must very soon arrive within view of the American coast; again and again asserting that his sole concern was for his passengers, and that for his own safety he had no anxiety.
"But think, Dick," said the lady, "what a position you would have been in, if you had not had your passengers. You would have been alone with that terrible Negoro; you would have been rather alarmed then."
"I should have taken good care to put it out of Negoro's power to do me any mischief, and then I should have worked the ship by myself," answered the lad stoutly.
His very pluck gave Mrs. Weldon renewed confidence. She was a woman with wonderful powers of endurance, and it was only when she thought of her little son that she had any feeling of despair; yet even this she endeavoured to conceal, and Dick's undaunted courage helped her.