“In about two minutes Mr. Rogers stepped up, with his eyes like two auger-holes, and said he, ‘Captain, we’re makin’ no knots an hour.  We’re not sailing at all.’

“‘Get out,’ roared the captain, ’don’t you see the sails?  Don’t you feel the wind?  Throw that log again, sir.’

“Well, they threw the log again, the captain saw it done, and sure enough Mr. Rogers was right.  The vessel wasn’t moving.  With a wind that ought to have carried her spinning along, miles and miles in an hour, she was standing stock-still.  The skipper here let out one of the strongest imprecations used in navigation, and said he, ’Mr. Rogers, is it possible that there is a sand-bar in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, and that we’ve stuck on it?  Cast the lead.’

“I will just state to the ladies,” said the marine, turning toward the table, “that the lead is a heavy weight that is lowered to the bottom of a body of water to see how deep it is, and this operation is called sounding.  Well, they sounded and they sounded, but everywhere—­fore, aft, and midship—­they found plenty of water; in fact, not having a line for deep-sea sounding they couldn’t touch bottom at all.

“I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen,” said the marine, looking from one to the other of the party, “that things now began to feel creepy.  I am not afraid of storms, nor fires at sea, nor any of the common accidents of the ocean; but for a ship to stand still with plenty of water under her, and a strong wind filling her sails, has more of the uncanny about it than I fancy.  Pretty near the whole of the crew was on deck by this time, and I could see that they felt very much as I did, but nobody seemed to know what to say about it.

“Suddenly the captain thought that some unknown current was setting against us, and forcing the vessel back with the same power that the wind was forcing her forward, and he tried to put the ship about so as to have the wind on her starboard quarter; but as she hadn’t any headway, or for some other reason, this didn’t work.  Then it struck him that perhaps one of the anchors had been accidentally dropped, but they were all in their places, and if one of them had dropped, its cable would not have been long enough to touch bottom.

“Now I could see that he began to look scared.  ‘Mr. Browser,’ said he, to the chief engineer, ’for some reason or other this ship does not make headway under sail.  You must go to work and get the engine running.’  And for the rest of that day everybody on board who understood that sort of thing was down below, hard at work with the machinery, hammering and banging like good fellows.

“The chief officer ordered a good many of the sails to be taken in, for they were only uselessly straining the masts, but there were enough left to move her in case the power of the current, or whatever it was that stopped her, had slackened, and she steadily kept her position with the breeze abaft.