What next? A plank? No; a cask,—one of the empty water-casks? That would be the thing,—the thing itself.
No sooner thought of than one was detached. The lashings were cut with the axe, in default of his finding a knife; and the cask, like the kit, soon fell into the wake. Not very rapidly it was true; for the Catamaran now, deprived of her sail, did not drift so fast to leeward as formerly. Still she went faster than either the kit or the cask, however; on account of the breeze acting upon her stout mast and some other objects that stood high upon her deck; and William very reasonably supposed that to swimmers so much exhausted,—as by that time must be both Ben and Snowball,—even the difference of a cable’s length might be of vital importance.
It occurred to him also, that the greater the number of waifs sent in their way, the better would be their chance of seeing and getting hold of one of them. Instead of desisting therefore, as soon as he had detached the first cask, he commenced cutting loose a second, and committing it to the sea in like manner.
Having freed a second, he continued on to a third, and then a fourth, and was actually about to sever the lashings of a fifth one, with the intention to leave only the sixth one—that which contained the stock of precious water—attached to the Catamaran. He knew that the raft would still float, without any of the casks to buoy it up; and it was not any fear on that score that caused him to desist, when about to give the cut to the cords that confined cask Number 5. It was an observation which he had made of an entirely different nature; and this was, that the third cask when set loose, and more especially the fourth, instead of falling into the wake of the Catamaran, kept close by her side, as if loath to part company with a craft to which they had been so intimately attached.
William wondered at this, but only for a short moment. He was not slow in comprehending the cause of the unexpected phenomenon. The raft, no longer buoyed up, had sunk almost to the level of the surface; and the breeze now failed to impel it any faster than the casks themselves: so that both casks and Catamaran were making leeway at a like rate of speed, or rather with equal slowness.
Though the sailor-lad was dissatisfied on first perceiving this, after a moment’s reflection, he saw that it was a favourable circumstance. Of course, it was not that the casks were making more way to leeward, but that the Catamaran was making less; and, therefore, if there was a chance of the swimmers coming up with the former, there was an equal probability of their overtaking the latter,—which would be better in every way. Indeed, the raft was now going at such a rate, that the slowest swimmer might easily overtake her, provided the distance between them was not too great.
It was this last thought that now occupied the mind of little William, and rendered him anxious. Had the swimmers fallen too far into the wake? Or would they still be able to swim on to the raft?
Where were they at that moment? He looked aft, towards the point from which he supposed himself to have been drifting. He was not sure of the direction; for the rude construction on which he stood had kept constantly whirling in the water,—now the stem, now the quarters, anon the bows, or beam-ends turned towards the breeze. He looked, but saw nothing. Only the sea-kit that by this time had got several hundred fathoms to windward, cask Number 1 a little nearer, and Number 2 still nearer. These, however, strung out in a line, enabled him to conjecture the direction in which the swimmers, if still above water, should be found.
Indeed, it was something more definite than a conjecture. Rather was it a certainty. He knew that the raft could not have made way otherwise than down the wind; and that those who belonged to it could not be elsewhere than to windward.
Guided, therefore, by the breeze, he gazed in this direction,—sweeping with his eye an arc of the horizon sufficiently large to allow for any deviation which the swimmers might have made from the true track.