'If I could be sure that they had made off in their boat, and were still afloat in her,' answered the captain, 'I should know how to advise you. But if they have been received on board a ship, then I don't see what can be done. For in what direction may that ship be heading? Enough if your young lady should be safe, sir. Supposing her to be on board a ship, I have no doubt of your hearing good news of her, in course of time, after your arrival in England.' He opened the cabin-door, and called to one of the stewards. 'My compliments to the chief officer, and ask him to come to me.' Mr. Mulready quickly presented himself. 'We have some notion,' said Captain Barrington, addressing his mate, whilst he laid his hand upon the log of the _Mowbray_, 'that the crew of the schooner may have left her in their boat, taking the young lady with them. Send a couple of hands--don't trouble the young gentlemen,' said he, with a supercilious smile, vanishing almost as it appeared upon his firm lips, 'but a couple of sharp hands to the royal mastheads. Give one of them this glass.' He handed Mr. Mulready a binocular. 'Let the other take the ship's telescope aloft. I want the sea carefully swept. Make them understand that they must creep in their search to the very verge, for how far off is a boat visible? But they might sight the gleam of her lugsail.' Mr. Mulready took the glasses, and went swiftly out. Captain Parry stood at the open window, listening to what was passing, straining his sight also with consuming passions of dread, blind desire, helpless wrath, at the star-blue line of the sea that swept the brilliance of the heavens within little more than a league. The captain of the ship went to a locker, and took out a chart of the Atlantic. He spread it, and called to Captain Parry. The officer turned, and eagerly stepped to the chart. He saw zigzag prickings or lines upon the white sheet, as though somebody had been trying to represent flashes of lightning. Each line terminated in a little dotted circle. These were the 'runs.' But, then, these were also the Doldrums, and the motive power of that ship, the _Alfred_, lay in the breeze that, in the Doldrums, blows in the delicate catspaw that scarcely has power to run a shiver into the glazed breast. 'This was our situation at noon yesterday,' said the commander, putting his finger upon the northernmost little circle. 'There is no land for leagues, as you may observe.' 'What are those rocks?' observed Captain Parry, peering. 'St. Paul's Island--a horrible hornet's nest of black fangs, entirely out of the boat's reach. I am not sure that I ever heard of a boat effecting a landing. Anyone cast ashore there must perish. There is nothing to eat or drink. It is the desolation of hell!' added the commander, with a note of religious fervour in his speech; 'and a dreadful surf like a nightmare of storm raves day and night round those rocks.'