"You haven't said what your meaning is in this voyage, and I haven't asked any questions. But in the last few days I've come to see that our friend there," and he nodded toward Tom Horn, who had taken his accustomed place in the bow, "has something to do with it; and so I bid you look to your facts. Even now we are in strange seas; and we're headed for stranger still." Anthony nodded. "The ship is commissioned for an errand out of the common," he said. "And we are headed now as I intended to head from the first." Corkery looked at the sky to the north, and then at the limp sails. "We'll have a stir of wind in a little," he said. "And I'll be pleased enough when it comes." But the breeze was a light one, and, though it huddled into the sails, it increased the schooner's pace but little. Mademoiselle Lafargue, who had come on deck, gazed out across the water with its masses of weed and its bits of wreckage. "I had been trying to read," she said. "But there is something oppressive in the air, and I could not. So I sat and looked out at the port; the sea looks strange, and the birds that hover about are stranger still." She pointed to where some dirty, evil-looking fowl hung, poised, near the schooner; their great wings seldom stirred, and their narrow eyes were fixed upon the _Roebuck_. "Tom Horn has told me of those," said Anthony. "It seems to be a sort of vulture, and, no doubt, there is much drifts into these seas which goes to keeping them sleek." She shivered as she looked at the birds. "What can be to the south of us," she said, "when the approach is so full of anxiety? The very air seems poisonous." "It blows over the grave of many a hope, if all I hear is true," said Anthony. "But let us not think of that. To us it offers a chance of victory; and we can't let our nerves grow slack because of the tales of other men, whether false or true. Ahead is our direction." He looked at her soberly. "And ahead we must go, no matter what foul promises grow in our sight." She looked into his face; and deep in her woman's eyes was the candor of a child. "That is like you," she said. "It is very like you. I am ashamed." "God knows," he said, "I like the place no more than you! Give me clear water, and it may rage as it likes, for that is only natural. But a sea which runs with a kind of slime, and whose birds are eaters of carrion, has no place in the book of things. Nevertheless," and he nodded to her and smiled, "we'll move deeper into it; and then I may have occasion to alter my views." Two weeks passed; often their sails hung idle, while time went completely around the clock; a slow, hot wind sometimes blew; and they held to the south and made what time they might. The drift grew thicker; the weed sometimes choked their progress; a green, stiff sea spread out before them; strange life crept upon it, and the hideous birds perched upon bits of wreckage, much as crows might in a stump-filled field.