At dawn the wind had died away to a light breeze, and the sun rose to shine upon an ocean of unspecked blue. To the eastward, the slopes of New Britain were hidden from our view by a thick mist, only the tops of some high mountain peaks far inland showing above, and there seemed to be every appearance of the fine weather lasting. This gave us much satisfaction, and after a bathe in a rocky pool on the reef, we ate our breakfast of fish and coconut with good spirits, then filling our pipes, went down to the inner beach to bask in the glorious sunshine.
“If this sort ot weather keeps up,” I remarked to Yorke, “I'm afraid your prediction about our seeing Guest and the cutter in another two days won't be verified—it'll fall calm before noon to-day, and may keep so for a week. I've known a calm to last for a solid ten days on the north side of New Britain.”
“Perhaps so,” he replied; “but then the current about here sets strongly to the eastward, and somehow I feel certain that, wind or no wind, we'll see the ships.”
“Well, if we do, you ought to give up sailoring, Captain Yorke, and go into business as a prophet. I for one would always come to you for a tip. But, joking apart, let us imagine that Guest or the cutter did not run far to the eastward, but hove-to, and as soon as the hurricane had blown itself out, headed back for us; in such a case, both vessels may be within half a day's sail of us at this very moment.”
“That is quite possible—it is also possible they may be within twenty miles of us, becalmed. It would not surprise me if Guest actually drifts in sight of these islands, and comes to look for us in his boat.”
“Now that brings me to the kernel of my imagination. I think it very likely he may have no boat to send, and——”
He gave me a mighty thump on the back.
“Good boy! I know what you're thinking of—the raft?”
“Exactly, Captain. So don't you think it would be as well for us to turn to at once, and make a couple of good paddles? though in an emergency the butt ends of dry coconut branches do very well for paddles.”
Then I went on to say that it was quite likely that Guest had lost both his boats, and the cutter her dingy, before there was time to have them properly secured; and that the brigantine had lost the whaler, which had brought us ashore, I was sure of, for she had, as I have mentioned, been nearly thrown over on her beam ends when struck by the first blast, and the boat must certainly either have been hopelessly stove when she was forced below, or torn away from the davits by the weight of water in her when the ship righted herself.