“Oh yes; I put two men aboard to take the brig into Gloucester, and promised to sail over the course they had just come, and keep the sharpest kind of a lookout for you. Wolfe Brady wanted to come with us, but felt that his duty lay with your father. He said, though, he would never go dorymates with anybody else if you shouldn’t turn up again. Captain McCloud was very much broken down over losing you under such circumstances, so soon after your wonderful meeting with each other, and I was afraid he was going to have a relapse of his fever. For that reason I made him promise, before I left him, that he would take the brig at once into port, and not attempt to find you. I, of course, had no idea that you could be found, and had not the slightest hope of ever seeing you again. How did you manage to follow the brig’s course so well without any compass and under a clouded sky?” “We had a compass,” replied Breeze, smiling. “Did you? They said on board the brig that there was none in the dory, and that, provided you were in it, you would probably be lying to a drag about where they left you.” Then Breeze told Captain Coffin the whole story of the golden ball, and the important part it had played in directing their movements. When he had finished the captain said, “Well, it has certainly saved you this time by bringing you to this point; for if I had kept the course I was steering all night, and you had simply drifted before the wind, we might have been anywhere from thirty to fifty miles apart by morning. I don’t see now why you didn’t drift farther to the northward with this southerly wind.” “I guess it was because I made a pretty big allowance for leeway,” replied Breeze. “Oh yes; if you thought of that, I’ve no doubt it was.” “By-the-way, captain, how does it happen that you are only just now on your way to the Banks?” asked Breeze. “I thought you were to start within a week after the _Vixen_ left Gloucester.” “So we did,” replied the skipper, “and got as far as Banquereau. There we lost our foremast in a gale, and ran back after a new stick. While we were refitting I heard such bad reports from the Banks that I determined to try a new ground to me, and make a trip to the Iceland coast after a load of fletched[H] halibut.” ----- Footnote H: Fletch, a corruption of _flench_, or _flense_, meaning to strip off in layers. A fletched halibut is one from which the meat is cut off in strips and salted, to be afterwards smoked. ----- “To Iceland!” cried Breeze, in dismay. “Yes, lad, to Iceland. Sixteen hundred miles farther away from Gloucester than we are now. Twenty-four hundred miles to go, and the same distance to return, is a pretty long fishing trip, isn’t it? But it will soon be over, and early next autumn we’ll land you safe and sound in Gloucester again, in plenty of time to get ready for a winter’s trip to George’s if you want to take one.”