"I can't say as I've seen any real sign," he said. "But somehow it seems to me we can't be very far off. A school of gulls flew over us this morning, and one of 'em—quite a young one—perched on the taffrail. She looked as if she'd just come off her roost."
"That should be a kind of sign," agreed the quartermaster. "What did the cap'n say when the last reckonin' was took? Did he give any word as to where we might make a landfall?"
Ben drowsily answered, "Somewheres off the west of Ireland, if I remember aright."
The quartermaster was silent for many moments. He was mentally calculating the chances of the Aurora reaching land in safety.
"Ben," he said presently, "d'ye think you could put your hand on a chart and find out our bearings?"
But Ben did not answer. He was sound asleep.
And while he slept, the message that he had cast upon the waters went drifting eastward. It drifted for many days, but always steadily eastward in the grip of the great Gulf Stream. And at last it was found. It was picked up by an Orkney fisherman off the west coast of Pomona Island. The slip of paper was duly passed from hand to hand until it came into the possession of Captain Speeding, whose little frigate the Firebrand, twenty-eight guns, was at that time stationed in Stromness Bay for the protection of fisheries and of trade.
Of course Captain Speeding could not think of quitting his comfortable quarters and sailing off on what, after all, was probably a wild-goose chase. How could he tell that the message was genuine? It might well be a mere hoax, a wily ruse of one of the Scapa Flow smugglers, or even (which was quite likely) a clever trick of John Goff, the redoubtable pirate of the Pentland Firth, to get his Majesty's ship Firebrand and her bristling guns temporarily away from the islands, so that he might run in his ill-gotten cargo undisturbed. Captain Speeding had been in active search of John Goff and his freebooting crew for months past, and it was not his intention to let the rascals slip through his fingers.
And yet, considering the matter from the point of view of duty, he dared not ignore the summons that had come to him from across the sea. The distressed ship was one of his Majesty's, and if the writing of the appealing letter was to be credited, succour was urgent.