Toward four o’clock, Negoro, who was rarely seen, left his post and came up on the forecastle.  Dingo, doubtless, was sleeping in some corner, for it did not bark as usual.

Negoro, always silent, remained for half an hour observing the horizon.

Long surges succeeded each other without, as yet, being dashed together.  However, they were higher than the force of the wind accounted for.  One must conclude from that, that there was very bad weather in the west, perhaps at a rather short distance, and that it would not be long in reaching these parts.

Negoro watched that vast extent of sea, which was greatly troubled, around the “Pilgrim.”  Then his eyes, always cold and dry, turned toward the sky.

The aspect of the sky was disturbing.  The vapors moved with very different velocities.  The clouds of the upper zone traveled more rapidly than those of the low strata of the atmosphere.  The case then must be foreseen, in which those heavy masses would fall, and might change into a tempest, perhaps a hurricane, what was yet only a very stiff breeze—­that is to say, a displacement of the air at the rate of forty-three miles an hour.

Whether Negoro was not a man to be frightened, or whether he understood nothing of the threats of the weather, he did not appear to be affected.  However, an evil smile glided over his lips.  One would say, at the end of his observations, that this state of things was rather calculated to please him than to displease him.  One moment he mounted on the bowsprit and crawled as far as the ropes, so as to extend his range of vision, as if he were seeking some indication on the horizon.  Then he descended again, and tranquilly, without having pronounced a single word, without having made a gesture, he regained the crew’s quarters.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all these fearful conjunctions, there remained one happy circumstance which each one on board ought to remember; it was that this wind, violent as it was or might become, was favorable, and that the “Pilgrim” seemed to be rapidly making the American coast.  If, indeed, the weather did not turn to tempest, this navigation would continue to be accomplished without great danger, and the veritable perils would only spring up when the question would be to land on some badly ascertained point of the coast.

That was indeed what Dick Sand was already asking himself.  When he should once make the land, how should he act, if he did not encounter some pilot, some one who knew the coast?  In case the bad weather should oblige him to seek a port of refuge, what should he do, because that coast was to him absolutely unknown?  Indeed, he had not yet to trouble himself with that contingency.  However, when the hour should come, he would be obliged to adopt some plan.  Well, Dick Sand adopted one.