For, as the day wore on, reports reached the Dockyard from the different coastguard-stations along the eastern and western coast of the mainland and from the Isle of Wight, whence a strict look-out had been kept on the approaches to Spithead and the adjacent waters of the Channel. These reports were all to the same effect. Not a trace had been seen of the missing boat; nor anything heard of Bob and Dick. It was the same the following day, nothing likewise being then reported; although the search had been redoubled and one of the Government tugs sent out from the harbour to scour the offing. Hope now gave way to despair before the certainty that stared them in the face, putting possibility beyond doubt. Everybody believed the boat had been swamped, or run down in the fog, and that Bob and Dick were drowned! Poor boys! CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. A SEA-FOG. "Now," said Bob to himself, when he got down to the beach after a sharp run across the common, "I must be as spry as possible with my swim, or else I shall be too late for the boat, as dad said I would be, for I really haven't got much time to spare!" Unfortunately, however, at the very outset, poor Bob met with obstacles that prevented this praiseworthy intention being effectively carried out. In the first place, Dick, with whom he had always bathed in company since their first involuntary dip together off the castle rampart on the first evening of their arrival at Southsea, was not at their usual trysting-place. Not only that, he was nowhere to be seen in the neighbourhood of the shore. "I wonder where he can be?" said Bob, continuing his soliloquy in a very disjointed frame of mind, after looking in every direction fruitlessly, and calling out Dick's name in vain. "I wonder where he can be? The Captain did not say he wasn't to come with us this morning!" At last, after wasting some precious minutes thus waiting, he began undressing very slowly, instead of in the usual brisk manner in which he was in the habit of peeling off his clothes, running a race with Dick to see who would get into the water first. Then, at length, he plunged in to take his swim in a very half-hearted fashion, going in reluctantly and coming out in the same undecided way; while, to make matters worse and further protract his loitering, just as he was beginning to dress again, a nasty spiteful bloodhound, which was prowling by the shore, made a most unprovoked attack on Rover, necessitating his going to his rescue with a big stone--Master Bob hopping up to the scene of action "with one shoe off and one shoe on," like the celebrated "John" the hero of the nursery rhyme! Rover was not quite a match for the brute that assailed him; but with Bob's help, not omitting the big stone, the two "routed the enemy with great slaughter," the bloodhound fleeing away ignominiously with his tail between his legs, and Rover raising a paean of victory in the shape of a defiant bark as he retreated.