This was the northern arm of the Gulf Stream.
Supper was served.
Our friends now kept watch two by two.
Outside it was frightfully cold, for the thermometer mercury had fallen to thirty-five degrees below zero.
The air was fogged around the boat by clouds of fine needles of ice, through which the moonlight shone, making the sky gleam and glisten like polished silver.
To go out in this frozen moisture of air, leaving any part of the body exposed, meant frost bites of the severest kinds, as our friends knew by experience.
The night passed wearily away.
When day came, no sunlight appeared until eleven o’clock.
Even then it only lasted three hours.
“It hardly seems probable that the boat could have landed here,” said Frank. “That shore ice would keep it away.”