He gazed in vain. The kit, the casks, a gull or two, soaring on snowy wings, were all the objects that broke the monotony of the blue water to windward.
He glided across the low-lying planks of the raft, and up to the empty cask still attached, which offered the highest point for observation. He balanced himself on its top, and once more scanned the sea to windward.
Nothing in sight, save kit, casks, and gulls lazily plying their long scimitar-shaped wings with easy unconcern, as if the limitless ocean was,—what in reality it was,—their habitat and home.
Suffering the torture of disappointment,—each moment increasing in agony,—little William leaped down from the cask; and, rushing amidships, commenced mounting the mast.
In a few seconds he had swarmed to its top: and, there clinging, once more directed his glance over the water. He gazed long without discovering any trace of his missing companions,—so long that his sinews were tried to the utmost; and the muscles both of his arms and limbs becoming relaxed, he was compelled to let go, and slide down despairingly upon the planks forming the deck of the Catamaran.
He stayed below only long enough to recover strength; and then a second time went swarming up the stick. If kit and casks should serve no better purpose, they at least guided him as to the direction; and looking over both, he scanned the sea beyond.
The gulls guided him still better; for both—there was a brace of them—had now descended near to the surface of the sea; and, wheeling in short flights, seemed to occupy themselves with some object in the water below. Though they were at a great distance off, he could hear an occasional scream proceeding from their throats: as if the object attracting them excited either their curiosity or some passion of a more turbulent character.
Their evolutions,—constantly returning towards a centre,—guided the eye of the observer until it rested on an object just visible above the sheen of the water. The colour of this object rendered it the more easy of being distinguished amidst the blue water that surrounded it; for it was blacker than anything which the sea produces,—unless it were the bone of the giant Mysticetus. Its shape, too—almost a perfect sphere—had something to do in its identification: for William was able to identify it, and by a process of negative reasoning. It was not the black albatross, the frigate-bird, nor the booby. Though of like colour, there was no bird of such form as that. There was neither beast nor fish belonging to the sea that could show such a shape above its surface. That sable globe, rounded like a sea-hedgehog, or a Turk’s-head clew, and black as a tarred tackle-block, could be nothing else than the woolly pate of Snowball, the sea-cook!
A little beyond were two other objects of dark colour and founded shape; but neither so dark nor so round as that already identified. They must be the heads of the English sailor and Lilly Lalee. They appeared to be equally objects of attraction to the gulls, that alternately flew from one to the other, or kept hovering above them,—and continuously uttering their shrill, wild screams,—now more distinctly heard by little William, clinging high up on the mast of the Catamaran.