By and by, on a gentle breeze springing up from the southward and westward, Master Bob, boylike, suggested their slipping the _Zephyr's_ moorings and going for a little sail out into the offing.

"We needn't run very far," he said. "Say, only to the fort there and back again, you know."

But d.i.c.k would not hear of the proposal.

"No, Master Bob, not lest the Cap'en gived orders," he remonstrated.

"Why, he'd turn me off if I did it; and, he's that kind to me as I wouldn't like to vex him, no not for nothing!"

"He wouldn't mind me though," argued Bob. "Didn't he say the other day--why, you heard him tell h.e.l.lyer yourself--that he'd back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?"

"Ees, I heerd him," reluctantly a.s.sented the other; "but that didn't mean fur us to go out in the boat alone."

"Well, d.i.c.k, I didn't think you were a coward!" said Bob with great contempt, angry at being thwarted. "I really didn't."

This cut the other to the heart.

"You doesn't mean that, Master Bob," he exclaimed reproachfully, hesitating to utter his scathing reply. "Ah, you didn't say as I wer' a coward that time as I jumped into the water arter you behind the castle."

"Forgive me, d.i.c.k," cried Bob impulsively, "I was a beast to say such a thing! Of course, I know you are not a coward; but, really, I'm sure the Captain would not mind a bit our going for a sail--especially if he knew, and he does know, about my being left behind all alone while they all have gone off to Southampton in the steamer enjoying themselves!"

This last appeal made d.i.c.k hesitate; and, in hesitating thus, he lost his firmness of resolution.

"Well, Master Bob, if we only goes a little ways and you promises fur to come back afore the tide turns, I don't mind unmooring for a bit; though, mind, Master Bob, you'll bear all the blame if the Cap'en says anythink about it!"

"Of course I will, d.i.c.k, if he does; but I know he won't say anything.

You may make your mind easy on that score!" With these words, Bob sprang forward on the fo'c's'le and began loosening the jib from its fastenings; while d.i.c.k, now that his scruples were overcome, set to work casting off the gaskets of the mainsail, the two boys then manning the halliards with a will, and hoisting the throat of the sail well up.

The jib was then set, its sheet being slackened until d.i.c.k slipped the buoy marking the yacht's moorings overboard; when, the tack being hauled aft, and the mainsail peaked, the bows of the cutter paid off and she walked away close-hauled, standing out towards "No Man's Fort," on the starboard tack.

It was now past midday and the tide was making into the harbour; so that, as the wind from the south-west had got rather slight, veering round to the southwards, the cutter did not gain much of an offing, losing in leeway nearly all she got in beating out to windward.

"I vote we let her run off a little towards the Nab," said Bob, seeing what little progress they made towards the fort; and he, being the steersman, put the helm up, easing off at the same time the sheet of the mainsail; d.i.c.k, who was in the bows, attending to the jib. "It's awful poor fun drifting like this!"

"Mind you turns back agen when the tide begins to run out!" premised d.i.c.k. "You promised as we wasn't to go fur!"

"All right," replied Bob, "I won't forget."

But, now, a strange thing happened.

No sooner had the cutter's bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.

"Hi, Rover, come back, sir!" yelled out Bob, at the pitch of his voice--"Rover, come back!"

But, the dog, although hitherto always obedient to his young master's call, paid no attention to it now, turning a deaf ear to all his whistles and shouts and swimming steadily towards the sh.o.r.e.

"Poor Rover, he'll be drownded, sure-ly!" said d.i.c.k. "Don't 'ee think we'd better go arter he, poor chap?"

"Not a bit of it!" replied Bob, angry at the dog's desertion, as he thought it, putting down Rover's behaviour to some strange dislike on his part to being in the yacht, at all events when she was moving briskly through the water. "He has swum twice as far in the river in London, and I won't go after him!"

Bob, however, brought the little yacht up to the wind again, watching until Rover was seen to emerge from the sea and crawl up on the beach again; when the cutter's head was allowed to pay off again, and within a couple of hours or so, although neither of the boys took any note of how the time was going, they had not only pa.s.sed the Nab but were now nearing the Ower's light-ship.

Not till then did d.i.c.k become aware how far they had reached out, Portsmouth having long since disappeared and even the forts beginning to show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.

"Master Bob, Master Bob!" he cried in consternation, never having been so far out before, even with the Captain. "Do 'ee know where we be now?"

"Why, out at sea, to be sure!" said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron's corsair-- "O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea."

For his soul certainly was, for the moment, quite as "boundless" and his "thoughts as free," from all consideration, save of the present--"Isn't it jolly?"

"Well, I doesn't know about that," replied d.i.c.k, looking very glum.

"I'm a-thinking of the gitting back; which, wi' the tide a-setting out from the harbour, won't be so easy, I knows!"

"Nonsense, d.i.c.k!" said Bob in his usual off-hand way, though bringing the cutter up to the wind, so as to go about on the other tack. "You're frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got round more to the south; so we'll be able to run back to Portsmouth in no time. The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a wind!"

However, "Man proposes and G.o.d disposes."

The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of running in homewards "in no time," the cutter, after a time, became becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open Channel again.

d.i.c.k was the first to notice this.

"Look, Master Bob!" he cried. "We aren't making no headway at all! I don't see we're getting any the nearer to the Nab!"

"We will, soon," replied Bob, all hopeful. "It's only because the breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we'll pick it up again! I think, d.i.c.k, we'd better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away more!"

This was done; but, still the _Zephyr_ would not move.

She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies swayed her in this direction and that.

"I knewed we was doin' wrong," remarked d.i.c.k presently, after a long silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. "It's a judgment on us!"

"A fiddlestick!" retorted Bob. "We'll only drift about like this for a short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to Spithead like one o'clock!"

"I doesn't believe that, Master Bob," said d.i.c.k disconsolately, sitting down on a thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an hour. "We should ha' tuk warnin', Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what wer' a-coming and so he swum ash.o.r.e in time, he did!"

"Rover is a faithless creature!" cried Bob hotly. "I'll give him a good licking when we reach the land again, you see!"

"When'll that be, Master Bob?"

"Oh, some time or other before night," replied he defiantly, but d.i.c.k could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of circ.u.mstances.

They did not pa.s.s a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their drooping spirits, Bob and d.i.c.k thinking that the wind by and by would affect them, too.

But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further and further out to sea.

"Hallo, there's a steamer!" sang out Bob after another protracted silence between the pair. "I see her smoke easily. She's steering right for us!"

"Where?" asked d.i.c.k. "I doesn't see no steamer, Master Bob."

"There!" said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon.