Arrived on board, he gave a vigorous turn to the tiller, laid hold of the sheet, let out a reef here, took in another there; the pinnace was soon completely at his command, and behaved admirably; true, she pitched furiously, and the gunwale was under water at every plunge. He headed along the coast till the point beyond which Fritz had first observed the _Nelson_ was fairly doubled; some days before this point was called Cape Deliverance, it was now, perhaps, about to acquire the term of Cape Disappointment, but for the moment its future designation was in embryo. Leaping on the poop, Willis carefully scanned the horizon as the boat rose upon the summit of the waves; but seeing nothing, he at last leapt down again with an expression of rage that, under other circumstances, would have been irresistibly comic. Abandoning the direction of the pinnace, he went and sat down on a bulk-head, and covered his face with his hands, in an attitude of profound desolation. "Willis! Willis!" cried Jack, "I shall tell Sophia." But there was neither the soft voice there, the caressing hand, nor the sweet fascination of the young girl's presence, and Willis continued immovable. Becker saw that his was one of those minds that grew less calm the more they were urged, and the excitement of which must be permitted to wear itself out; he therefore beckoned his sons to leave him to his own reflections. The wind still blew a gale, and the pinnace pitched heavily; but the sun was now beginning to break through the masses of lurid cloud, and the air was becoming less and less charged with vapor. "I can descry nothing either," said Becker; "and yet this is the direction the storm must have driven the sloop." "The sea is very capricious," suggested Fritz. "True, but not to the extent of carrying a ship against the wind." "Unfortunately," said Jack, "it is not on sea as on land, where the slightest indications of an object lost may lead to its discovery; a word dropped in the ear of a passer-by might put you on the track, but here it is no use saying, 'Sir, did you not see the _Nelson_ pass this way?'" "Fire a shot," said Ernest; "it may perhaps be heard, now that the air is less humid." The two-pounder was ready charged; Fritz struck a light and set fire to a strip of mimosa bark, with which he touched the piece, and the report boomed across the waters. Willis raised his head and listened anxiously, but soon dropped it again, and resumed his former attitude of hopeless despair. "It may be," said Ernest, "that the _Nelson_ hears our signal, though we do not hear hers." "How can that be?" inquired Jack. "Why, very easily. Sound increases or diminishes in intensity according as the wind carries it on or retards it." "What, then, is sound, that the wind can blow it about, most learned brother?"