Jerry meanwhile was making as good use of the marine glasses as he knew how.
"See anything that looks like the wreckage of a balloon on the water?" asked Frank, as he swept the horizon with his naked eye, but in vain.
"Not a beastly thing," returned the other, in a disappointed tone.
"Oh, I'm afraid we've come in the wrong direction," sighed tender-hearted Will, shaking his head dubiously; "and it's just terrible to think that those poor chaps may be drowning right now, and our little boat so near at hand!"
"Tell me about that, will you? There he goes as usual, making us feel like murderers or something, when we only want a chance to get in our fine rescuing act. Stop him talking that way, Frank, won't you?" pleaded Bluff, who had emptied all the sand out of the bag dropped by the drifting balloonists, and declared he meant to hang the same up in his den at home as a memento of the wonderful incident.
Frank stood up to see the better.
Carefully he scanned the horizon, beginning at the furthest possible quarter toward the south, and ranging to one equally improbable northward.
And everywhere it seemed to be the same dead level line, with not a break that gave signs of promise.
"And the strange thing about it all is that there doesn't seem to be a solitary vessel, big or little, in sight anywhere. It would be hard at any other time to find the gulf around here so utterly forsaken," he remarked, beginning to feel discouraged himself.
"It certainly looks as though we had the field to ourselves," remarked Bluff; "here we've come some miles from shore, which is getting 'hull-down,' as the sailors say, in the distance, and yet not a peep of the lost balloonists. How much further ought we go, Frank?"