"Then you mean to say nothing can prevent our drifting out to sea?" My silence and dejection gave him the sorrowful answer. Poor Hamilton! he was a brave enough fellow in his way, and willing to stand any risk for the good of the service,--this was all in the way of business, and he felt it to be right enough,--but the idea of being drowned on a pic-nic excursion seemed to strike him as something altogether out of his way. I will not say that he was afraid on the occasion, because I do not believe he would admit the influence of fear. But he gave me the idea of a man labouring under the strangeness of an inadmissible proposition. It seemed as though a strong sense of injured innocence were mixed with his apprehensions, as if he felt himself to have been _done_ and ill-treated. "You don't mean to say that you cannot get her round?" this was said to me in a tone that seemed to imply that I could if I would. "If I could," I answered, "I should have run her on the reef; she would certainly soon go to pieces there, but it was our only chance." "Never mind her going to pieces," said he; "I will pay half the damage." It annoyed me, even at that terrible moment, to hear our condition made a question of pounds, shillings, and pence. I felt angry, too, with him, when I reflected that we had been brought to this predicament simply by his clumsiness. I so far gave way to anger as to tell him that, if we got safe to land I never would go sailing with him again, nor trust myself on salt water with a watch-mate who didn't know what "luff" meant, and who wanted to sail in the wind's eye under a jib. Poor Hamilton, who now seemed fully to appreciate our peril, contented himself with assuring me that I might rest quiet, for I never should go sailing again with him, or with anybody else. A growing and abiding sense of the truth of this probability soon checked the spirit of squabbling within each of us. We were every moment drifting out farther and farther. So long as the lights of the island had been visible, they had imparted some degree of comfort. They at least showed whither our course would lay in case matters should so far mend as to enable us to choose our own course. But our distance was each moment increasing, and the night was waxing darker continually. A few more minutes, and the lights were hidden from us; and we were left simply and literally without any knowledge of our position, on the Indian Ocean. The sea had got up, prodigiously, the wind blew harder than ever, and the night was as dark as pitch. Though she was flying before the wind, we could not keep the sea out of her,--it washed in over her quarter every few minutes, and it was all that we could do to keep her free by baling. Happily we had a couple of buckets with us, that served the turn well.