Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/204

190 upbraid myself for a weakling, and set to think out plans for my release. I had no compass, but, taking the north through the "pointers," I tried to make out the course in which I was drifting; yet this, I must confess, was a hopeless task. I thought that the boat was being carried by a steady current; yet whether the current set towards the land or away from it, I could not tell.

When a couple of hours had passed, and I could see the yacht no longer, I took a new consolation in the thought that I must, after all, be in the track of steamers bound out from, or to, New York; and in this hope I covered myself in the tarpaulins and lay down again to shield myself from the wind which blew with much sharpness as the night grew. I did not sleep, but lay half-dazed for an hour or more, and was roused only at a curious light which flashed above me in the sky. Its first aspect led me to the conclusion that I saw a reflection of the Aurora; but the second flash altered the opinion. The light was clearly focussed, being a volume of intensely bright, white rays which passed right above me with slow and guided motion, and then stopped altogether, almost fixed upon the jolly-boat. I knew then what it was, and I sat up to see the great beams of a man-of-war's search-light, showing an arc of the water almost as clear as by the sun's power. The vessel itself