A flag was nailed to the mast, union down, to be blown to pieces with the first breeze; then another, and another, until the flag locker was exhausted.  Next they hung out, piece after piece, all they could spare of the rotten bedding, until that too was exhausted.  Then they found, in a locker of their boat, a flag of Free Cuba, which they decided not to waste, but to hang out only when a sail appeared.

But no sail appeared, and the craft, buffeted by gales and seas, drifted eastward, while the days became weeks, and the weeks became months.  Twice she entered the Sargasso Sea—­the graveyard of derelicts—­to be blown out by friendly gales and resume her travels.  Occasional rains replenished the stock of fresh water, but the food they found at first, with the exception of some cans of fruit, was all that came to light; for the salt meat was leathery, and crumbled to a salty dust on exposure to the air.  After a while their stomachs revolted at the diet of cold soup, and they ate only when hunger compelled them.

At first they had stood watch-and-watch, but the lonely horror of the long night vigils in the constant apprehension of instant death had affected them alike, and they gave it up, sleeping and watching together.  They had taken care of their boat and provisioned it, ready to lower and pull into the track of any craft that might approach.  But it was four months from the beginning of this strange voyage when the two men, gaunt and hungry—­with ruined digestions and shattered nerves—­saw, with joy which may be imagined, the first land and the first sail that gladdened their eyes after the storm in the Florida Channel.

A fierce gale from the southwest had been driving them, broadside on, in the trough of the sea, for the whole of the preceding day and night; and the land they now saw appeared to them a dark, ragged line of blue, early in the morning.  Boston could only surmise that it was the coast of Portugal or Spain.  The sail—­which lay between them and the land, about three miles to leeward—­proved to be the try-sail of a black craft, hove-to, with bows nearly towards them.

Boston climbed the foremast with their only flag and secured it; then, from the high poop-deck, they watched the other craft, plunging and wallowing in the immense Atlantic combers, often raising her forefoot into plain view, again descending with a dive that hid the whole forward half in a white cloud of spume.

“If she was a steamer I’d call her a cruiser,” said Boston; “one of England’s black ones, with a storm-sail on her military mainmast.  She has a ram bow, and—­yes, sponsors and guns.  That’s what she is, with her funnels and bridge carried away.”

“Isn’t she right in our track, Boston?” asked the doctor, excitedly.  “Hadn’t she better get out of our way?”

“She’s got steam up—­a full head; sec the escape-jet?  She isn’t helpless.  If she don’t launch a boat, we’ll take to ours and board her.”