the Atlantic off the Biscayan coast and waters? or had we been transported by some devil into an unnavigated tract of ocean on the other side of the world? 

'There's no want of ships,' Abraham said. 'The cuss of the matter is, we don't fall in with them. S'elp me, if I could only find one to give me a chance, I'd chivey her even if she showed the canvas of a _R'yal Jarge_.' 'If this goes on you'll have to carry us to Australia,' said I, guessing from my spirits as I spoke that I was carrying an uncommonly long and dismal countenance. 'Hope not,' exclaimed sour Tommy, who was at the helm at this time of conversation. ''Taint that we objects to your company; but where's the grub for five souls a-coming from?' 'Don't say nothen about that,' said Abraham sharply. 'Both the gent and the lady brought their own grub along with them. _That_ ye know, Tommy, and I allow that ye hain't found their ham bad eating either. They came,' he added, softening as he looked at his mate, 'like a poor man's twins, each with a loaf clapped by the angels on to its back.' 

It was true enough that the provisions which had been removed from the raft would have sufficed Helga and me--well, I dare say, for a whole month, and perhaps six weeks, but for the three of the crew falling to the stock; and therefore I was not concerned by the reflection that we were eating into the poor fellows' slender larder. But, for all that, Thomas's remark touched me closely. I felt that if the three fellows, hearty and sailorly as were Abraham and Jacob--I say, I felt that if these three men were not already weary of us they must soon become so, more particularly if it should happen that they met with no ship to supply them with what they might require; in which case they would have to make for the nearest port, a delay they would attribute to us, and that might set them grumbling in their gizzards, and render us both miserable until we got ashore. 

However, I was no necromancer; I could not conjure up ships, and staring at the sea-line did not help us; but I very well recollect that that time of waiting and of expectation and of disappointment lay very heavily upon my spirits. There was something so strange in the desolation of this sea that I became melancholy and imaginative, and I remember that I foreboded a dark issue to my extraordinary adventure with Helga, insomuch that I took to heart a secret conviction I should never again see my mother--nay, that I should never again see my home. 

Sunday morning came. I found a fine bright day when I crawled out of my sail under the overhanging ledge. The wind 

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