Meanwhile this continuance of east winds made Captain Hull anxious.  He did not succeed in getting the vessel into the right course.  Later, near the Tropic of Capricorn, he feared finding calms which would delay him again, without speaking of the equatorial current, which would irresistibly throw him back to the west.  He was troubled then, above all, for Mrs. Weldon, by the delays for which, meanwhile, he was not responsible.  So, if he should meet, on his course, some transatlantic steamer on the way toward America, he already thought of advising his passenger to embark on it.  Unfortunately, he was detained in latitudes too high to cross a steamer running to Panama; and, besides, at that period communication across the Pacific, between Australia and the New World, was not as frequent as it has since become.

It then was necessary to leave everything to the grace of God, and it seemed as if nothing would trouble this monotonous passage, when the first incident occurred precisely on that day, February 2d, in the latitude and longitude indicated at the beginning of this history.

Dick Sand and Jack, toward nine o’clock in the morning, in very clear weather, were installed on the booms of the mizzen-topmast.  Thence they looked down on the whole ship and a portion of the ocean in a largo circumference.  Behind, the perimeter of the horizon was broken to their eyes, only by the mainmast, carrying brigantine and fore-staff.  That beacon hid from them a part of the sea and the sky.  In the front, they saw the bowsprit stretching over the waves, with its three jibs, which were hauled tightly, spread out like three great unequal wings.  Underneath rounded the foremast, and above, the little top-sail and the little gallant-sail, whose bolt-rope quivered with the pranks of the breeze.  The schooner was then running on the larboard tack, and hugging the wind as much as possible.

Dick Sand explained to Jack how the “Pilgrim,” ballasted properly, well balanced in all her parts, could not capsize, even if she gave a pretty strong heel to starboard, when the little boy interrupted him.

“What do I see there?” said he.

“You see something, Jack?” demanded Dick Sand, who stood up straight on the booms.

“Yes—­there!” replied little Jack, showing a point of the sea, left open by the interval between the stays of the standing-jib and the flying-jib.

Dick Sand looked at the point indicated attentively, and forthwith, with a loud voice, he cried;

“A wreck to windward, over against starboard!”

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

The wreck.

Dick Sand’s cry brought all the crew to their feet.  The men who were not on watch came on deck.  Captain Hull, leaving his cabin, went toward the bow.

Mrs. Weldon, Nan, even the indifferent Cousin Benedict himself, came to lean over the starboard rail, so as to see the wreck signaled by the young novice.