HOPE REVIVED. 135 A week passed, and still the tempest showed no sîgns of abating ; the barometer continued to fall, and not once did a period of calmer weather afibrd an opportunîty of carryîng saîl. The " Pilgrîm " stîll made her way north- east. Her speed could not be less than two hundred miles în twenty-four hours. But no land appeared. Vast as was the range of the American continent, extending for I20 degrees between the Atlantic and the Pacific, it was nowhere to be discerned. Was he dreaming? was he mad ? Dick would perpetually ask himself : had he been sailing in a wrong direction ? had he failed to steer aright ? But no: he was convînced there was no error in his steering. Although he could not actually see it for the mîst, he knew that day after day the sun rose before him, and that it set behind him. Yet he was constrained in bewilderment to ask, what had become of those shores of America upon which, when they came in sight, there was only too great a fear the ship should be dashed ? what had become of them ? where were they ? whither had this incessant hurricane driven them ? why did not the expected coast appear ? To ail thèse bewildering inquiries Dick could find no answer except to imagine that his compass had misled him. Yet he was powerless to put his own misgivings to the test; he deplored more than ever the destruction of the duplicate instrument which would hâve checked his registers. He studied his chart ; but ail in vain ; the position in which he found himself as the resuit of Negoro's treachery, seemed to baffle him the more, the more he tried to solve the mystery. The days were passing on in this chronîc state of anxiety, when one moming about eight o*clock, Hercules, who was on watch at the fore, suddenly shouted, — " Land ! " Dick Sands had little reliance upon the negro's inex- perienced eye, but hurried forward to the bow.
- Where's the land ? '* he cried ; his voice being scarcely
audible above the howlîng of the tempest (
