There was no sleep for me that night, for I couldn’t leave the steering-oar a minute or the canoe would have broached to, and there would have been a sudden end of my voyage, and Mr. Crusoe would have been left alone for good and all.
However, the gale was a short one, and it blew itself out by morning, and then the sea went down very fast. By eight o’clock there was only a stiff breeze, and I was able to heave the boat to and get my breakfast and a little rest. I calculated that I must be about a hundred miles from the island, but the wind had backed into the north-west, and I could lay a straight course for home. I had never called the island home before, but now I was regularly homesick for it, and I would have given almost anything to see Mr. Crusoe, and tell him that I would stick by him in spite of his grandfather.
I sailed all that day and the next night, and by my reckoning I ought to have sighted the island by daylight, but I was disappointed. Way up to windward I saw the smoke of a steamer, but there wasn’t the least use in trying to beat up to her, and I didn’t try it. All that day I stood on what I thought was the right course, but no island came in sight, and for fear that I would miss it in the dark, I hove to again for the night.
Luckily I had the same breeze in the morning, for I had only one little paddle in the canoe, and I could have done nothing with her in a calm. I had now been steering south-west so long that I was sure I must have passed the island, but whether it lay on the right hand or the left I could only guess. I resolved to steer south-east for six hours, and then, if the island did not come in sight, I intended to steer as nearly north-east as the wind would let me for another six hours.
By this means I made sure that I should sight the island by night, but, as it turned out, I didn’t. I steered south-west from eight till twelve, and then the wind all died out. There wasn’t a breath, and the canoe might as well have been anchored, so far as I could see.
The calm lasted all day, and I turned in at night expecting to wake up if there should be a breeze. I could not get asleep for a long while. I had heard of calms on the Pacific lasting three weeks, and I felt as if I should go stark crazy if I had to float in a boat in a dead calm and in hot weather for any such time. I felt more than ever that I had done wrong to leave the island, and that the chances were that, instead of finding a ship, and getting the captain to go and take Mr. Crusoe off, I might be becalmed, and drift with a current so far that I would completely lose my reckoning, and not be able to tell anybody where the island was, even if I should be picked up.
At last I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was broad daylight, and the sun was just behind an island that was only fifteen or twenty miles away. At first I didn’t recognize it, but before long I saw it was my own island. There was a gentle breeze, that was blowing me directly towards the land, and I suppose there must have been a current that had carried me in the same direction during the night. It did not take me many minutes to set both sails and to rig out a blanket for a spinnaker, and by noon I was at the entrance in the reef, and keeping a bright lookout for Mr. Crusoe.
CHAPTER X.
There was not a sign of Mr. Crusoe visible as I came up to the beach and landed. It was time for him to have the fire lighted to cook his dinner, but there was no fire. I went up to the hut where we slept, and found him lying on his bed. He must have been glad to see me, and I know he was very much surprised, for he evidently thought I was a ghost. “Is that you, Friday?” he asked, when he opened his eyes and saw me standing by his bed. “When were you drowned?”