Although Breeze and Nimbus had no distinct idea of the value of what they were finding, they knew enough about it to become intensely excited as they discovered piece after piece, and the little pile in the bottom of the boat began to assume very respectable proportions. In their eager search they forgot everything else, and paid no attention to where they were going, nor how far they had come. They even failed to notice the little squall of rain and fog that came whirling past them, bringing with it a change of wind. That they neglected to observe this was because, just at that moment, they sighted the great parent mass of gray stuff from which all the little pieces they had been picking up had broken off and drifted away. If they were excited before, they were wild with excitement now, and both of them very nearly pitched into the water in their eagerness to secure their prize and get it into the dory. They estimated its weight to be nearly, if not quite, a hundred pounds; and its bulk was so great that they had hard work to squeeze it into the boat. When at last this had been safely accomplished, they sat and gazed at it and at each other. “I shouldn’t wonder if it was worth a thousand dollars,” said Breeze, at length. “Mo’ like a millium!” answered Nimbus, whose ideas of the value of their prize were even more vague than those of his young dorymate. “Well,” said Breeze, “let’s head back for the schooner; Captain Coffin will know pretty near what it is worth. I suppose we’ll have to share this find with the rest of the crew, though;” and with the shadow of covetousness creeping over his soul, the boy thought sadly of how much pleasanter it would be to divide their prospective profits between two than among fourteen. The same thought was evidently weighing upon Nimbus, as he slowly picked up his oars and made ready to pull--where? Now for the first time since sighting the first bit of the stuff that had lured them from their post of duty they began to look for the buoy-flag, which they had been warned not to lose sight of. “There it is!” cried Breeze, pointing to a distant speck on the water. They pulled towards it; but, when they had approached close enough to discover its real nature, they found it to be but a bit of floating drift-wood, and though they did not know it, they had gone another half-mile in the wrong direction. “Well,” said Breeze, “it can’t be very far off, and so long as we pull with the wind we must get near enough to it for the schooner to sight us. The ambergris drifted with the wind, and we were pulling against it, you know.” Yes, Nimbus remembered that, and agreed that they must now go with the wind in order to retrace their course. But neither of them knew that the wind had changed. So, for more than an hour they pulled, in what they imagined to be the right direction, and every stroke carried them farther away from the schooner.