The border king and Captain Meinhold did not think it was necessary to set a watch during the night, for they had satisfied themselves that the island was absolutely uninhabited. Besides, all the men were too tired to do sentry duty, unless their lives certainly and surely depended upon it. Even then it was doubtful if they would have been able to keep awake. In the morning they were all feeling better for their long and refreshing sleep, but a new difficulty presented itself. Their stock of provisions was running perilously low, and the island afforded apparently no chance of replenishing it. This naturally hastened the departure from the island, and the men rowed lustily for the mainland, still out of sight. The bad weather had abated, though the sea was still by no means smooth. The work was hard, but not by any means so exhausting as on the previous day. “It looks as if we shall get through our troubles after all,” said Captain Meinhold to Cody. “I’m sure I hope so,” said the king of the scouts. “When we hit the land we must try to find out where we are, and then make a bee line for Fort McPherson. It won’t be an easy journey, I’m afraid, in the wretched condition we are in. Why, we haven’t even got a rifle with which to shoot game.” Needless to say, Cody did not let the men overhear this last rather gloomy view of the case. He whispered it to Captain Meinhold. To them he kept a face as smiling and a manner as cheery as ever. All day the men rowed, but when darkness fell they were still out of sight of land. During the night another violent squall sprang up on the treacherous surface of the lake, and again they had to battle desperately for their lives against wind and wave. When the dawn broke one of the boats was missing. It was the one that had overturned and been righted. After looking vainly for it for some time Meinhold and Cody came to the conclusion that it had been sunk in the squall. A few hours after dawn, in splendid weather, the shipwrecked party sighted the mainland. CHAPTER XXXI. JOE CONGO’S DIPLOMACY. There was some reason for haste, for the fine weather did not promise to last long; heavy clouds rose in the west, which soon obscured the whole sky, and it became impossible, with neither sun nor stars to guide them, to keep anything near to a direct westward course, which they thought would take them to Fort McPherson. Nor could they tell in which direction they varied from it; but shoreward they were sure they were going, though they no longer hoped to effect a landing very near the fort they were seeking. Vainly they had looked for land during the seemingly long night, and when daylight at length revealed it a few miles distant they coasted it for several hours in the hope of discovering some traces of others of their comrades who might have escaped from the wreck of the missing boat.