"The day passed quite uneventfully; everything went perfectly smoothly; the ship rode easily to her anchors; and there had been nothing to report. But about two bells in the first dog-watch I noticed that the sky was beginning to look a bit windy away down in the western quarter-- nothing to speak of, you understand, or to cause any uneasiness; but it made me take a look at the barometer, and I saw that it had dropped a trifle since eight bells; and at the same time the wind was distinctly freshening and the swell gathering weight. All this, of course, meant more wind within the next few hours; I therefore kept a sharp eye on the barometer; and when at four bells I found it still dropping I decided to let go the two stream anchors, as a precautionary measure, while we had light enough to see what we were doing; and this I did, at the same time paying out an extra fifty fathoms on each cable, after which I felt that we were perfectly safe in the face of anything short of a hurricane." The new skipper nodded his approval, but said nothing; and Purchase proceeded with his story. "Well, as you probably noticed, shortly after sunset the wind breezed up quite strongly; but I was not in the least uneasy, for the barometer had ceased to drop before eight bells, and, although the sky was overcast and the night very dark, there was nothing threatening in the look of the weather, and it was only occasionally that we really tautened out our cables. Still, I made up my mind to remain on deck all night, having had a good spell of sleep during the day. "As the night wore on and the wind held fresh but steady, I felt that after all I really need not have let go the streams, for the bowers alone would have held us quite easily against six times as much wind and sea as we had; you may therefore perhaps be able to picture to yourself my amazement and consternation when, a few minutes before six bells in the middle watch, I became aware that the ship was adrift and fast driving down toward the breakers!" "How did you discover that the ship was adrift? Did you feel her cables parting?" demanded the skipper.