It was a long day. The _Vagabond_ rolled sleepily from side to side in the slow swells and seemed very bored and weary. The boys played cards for a while after luncheon, but, as Dan remarked, there wasn’t a decent game that three could play. So they threw down the cards in disgust and went to writing letters. But, somehow, inspiration didn’t come very well, and finally Nelson gave up the attempt in despair and went out to the engine room and “fiddled with the engine”; the expression is Dan’s. Nelson could always manage to spend an hour or so quite contentedly with wrenches and pliers, oil cans and emery cloth and a nice big bunch of cotton waste. Just what he accomplished this afternoon I can’t say; but he killed fully an hour. In the meanwhile both Bob and Dan had taken to their bunks and had succeeded in getting to sleep. And so it was Nelson who discovered that the fog was lifting when, his “fiddling” completed, he put his head out of the door to toss a bunch of very dirty waste overboard. As the easiest way to awaken the sleepers he gave a long blast on the whistle. The effect was almost magical. Dan jumped clear out of the bunk and landed very wide-awake in the middle of the floor. Bob managed to escape with a bump on the side of his head. After recovering themselves they descended wrathfully on Nelson, demanding explanations. Nelson, wedged in a corner between the engine and the ice box, explained and was permitted to adjust his rumpled attire. Whereupon all went out to the dripping cockpit and watched the land appear slowly before them out of the gray void. It was like watching the development of a negative in the dark-room. At first there was a blank expanse of gray. Then a shadow appeared, dark and formless. Then a bit of the low-lying shore stood out boldly, its colors still blurred by the dissolving mist. And presently the sun appeared in the west, a hazy orange disk at the end of a funnel of orange light. And then, in an instant, the fog was nowhere to be seen save that here and there on an inland hillside a wisp of gray, like a floating veil, hung entangled amidst trees or bowlders. And with the returning sunlight came a brisk breeze from the south that stirred the oily surface of the water into tawny ripples that began to lap cheerfully against the hull of the _Vagabond_. Dan started to whistle blithely. A few minutes later the launch was speeding back across the bar, bound for the little cove where they had left Tom. That young gentleman’s fate had not greatly bothered his friends, although there had been throughout the day much idle speculation as to his probable whereabouts. Tom could look after himself, said Dan, and the others agreed. But when they reached the cove and the little beach with the blackened embers disfiguring the clean gravel and saw no Tommy they were at once surprised and disappointed. Bob was even inclined to be indignant.