CHAPTER XIV.

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN BALL.

It seemed to Breeze as though daylight never would come, as he lay there holding the open locket in his hand and wondering about it. How had it come open? and what did it contain? He was adrift in a fog, far out at sea, in a frail open boat. He was wet, cold, and hungry. His situation was about as uncomfortable as can well be imagined; but all this was lost sight of and forgotten in the thoughts aroused by that golden ball, which during his sleep he must have taken from his neck, and which had so unaccountably been opened. It was the visible evidence of the great mystery of his life, that he so longed to solve, and in his curiosity he wished for the daylight only that he might see what it contained. He hoped Wolfe would wake up, that he might talk of all this with him; but he would not disturb him, and after a while he, too, fell asleep again.

When Breeze next awoke it was early morning, and daylight was sifting faintly through the fog. Wolfe had been aroused some time before by the pain of his leg. He had just finished attending to the wound as well as he was able, and was replacing the bandage.

The moment he noticed that Breeze had opened his eyes, he exclaimed, “Good-morning, dorymate! We seem to be in luck, as usual.”

“How?” asked Breeze, wonderingly.

“How! Why, don’t you notice that the wind has gone down and the sea is getting smooth? We have had a pretty comfortable night, and I shouldn’t wonder if the sun drove away this beastly fog before long, and shone out warm and pleasant. Then we must surely sight something, out of all the vessels that are cruising on the Banks.”

“That’s so!” said Breeze, quite cheered by this hopeful view of the situation. Then, bethinking himself of the wonderful event of the preceding night, and anxious to add his bit of pleasant intelligence, he continued, “And best of all, Wolfe, the ball is open.”

“The what?” asked Wolfe, greatly puzzled for the moment to know what his companion meant.

“The ball! The golden ball that I wear around my neck, and that we were looking at yesterday.”

“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed the other, now greatly interested. “How did you get it open? What’s in it? Where is it?”

“I don’t know how I got it open, and I don’t know what is in it because it was too dark to see; but here it is.”

With this Breeze withdrew the locket from the bosom of his flannel shirt, into which he had instinctively thrust it for safe-keeping when he found himself dropping off to sleep, and they both bent over it eagerly.

One half had swung back from the other on a pivot, by which the two sections were still held together. After a single glance at it, Wolfe gave a shout.

“A compass, by all that’s wonderful!” he cried. “The very thing we’ve been wanting, above all others! Well, old man, any one who says we are not in luck now doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that’s all!”

One side did indeed hold a small but perfect compass, the daintiest that was ever seen. Its freely moving card was a thin plate of gold upon which were enamelled the four cardinal points and a coat of arms. The latter consisted of a blue shield with a diamond, cut in the form of a star, upon which the card was pivoted, in its centre. On the shield, above the star, and in the lower corners were three devices, which Breeze thought might be pyramids, and which Wolfe called volcanoes. Above the shield was a closed helmet, and beneath it, in letters of gold, the motto, “Point True.”

As Wolfe repeated this over to himself, his face wore a puzzled look. “‘Point True,’” he said aloud; “I have certainly heard that before, and I wonder where?” Finally he satisfied himself that he must have read it in some book, and gave the matter no further thought.

In the other half of the ball was a second golden plate on which was enamelled the same coat of arms, with the only difference that the central star in this case was formed of a pearl. A spring, which they did not discover for some time, slipped this plate aside, and in the cavity beneath it the boys saw three tiny locks of hair, of which one had evidently been cut from the head of an infant. On the under side of the plate was engraved “Merab to Tristram,” and Ruth’s answer to Naomi, “Whither thou goest, I will go.”

Breeze could not help feeling somewhat disappointed when he found that this was all. Although the ball had yielded up its secret, it had in reality told him nothing. It had merely given a new direction to his curiosity. Who were Merab and Tristram? To whom had the locks of hair belonged? The only satisfactory features of its revelation were the coat of arms and the compass. The former might at some future time be located, while the latter could be immediately used.

This thought had also come to Wolfe, who had rejoiced at the very first sight of the little vibrating card, and who now said,

“Let’s have breakfast right off, Breeze, and then start for Nova Scotia. I’ve been thinking the situation over, and though I believe we are somewhat farther away from Nova Scotia than we are from Newfoundland, we’ll stand a better chance of falling in with some sort of a vessel by steering west than if we headed to the north. So what do you say to laying a course due west, and sticking to it, taking turns at the oars all day?”

“I don’t care much which way we go,” answered Breeze; “but I think it will be much better for us to row than to lie still, because it will at any rate occupy our time and keep us warm.”

“All right, then, west it is; and I wish the cook would hurry up breakfast so that we could make a start. I’m not only awfully hungry, but I’m in a great hurry to get to Nova Scotia.”

The cheerfulness and flow of spirits by which this Irish lad managed to sustain both his own and his dorymate’s courage were wonderful. They never flagged, and from the first to the last of that memorable voyage his constant effort was to make the best of everything, and turn every trifling circumstance to account for the purpose of provoking a smile or inspiring fresh hope.

The two biscuit which, washed down with a swallow of water from the little keg, formed their breakfast, were quickly eaten. Then the drag to which they had been lying was taken aboard, and seizing a pair of oars, Wolfe, who had insisted upon keeping first watch, as he called it, began pulling vigorously in the direction indicated by Breeze. The latter made himself as comfortable as possible in the stern of the dory, with his gaze fixed upon the small compass that he held in his hand.

In addition to his own inclination to look upon the bright side of things, Breeze was happily influenced by his companion’s cheerful view of their situation, and now he said, “So long as we have lost the Vixen and found a compass, what a comfort the fog is!”

“Is it!” asked Wolfe, in surprise. “Well, I must confess I had not quite taken that view of it. How do you make it out?”

“Because it keeps us all the time hoping for something to turn up. It would be awfully discouraging to be able to see for miles, with nothing but water to look at. Now we may come upon some vessel at any minute.”

“That’s so. The skipper was telling the other night of some fellows who were out four days in a fog without food or water, and who had just given up in despair, when their dory was nearly capsized by drifting afoul of the cable of an anchored schooner.”

“I remember a story my father used to tell,” said Breeze, “about two men who were lost in a fog on this very Bank. They had been out only about an hour when the fog lifted, and they saw the flare their mates were burning for them. They rowed for it as hard as they could pull, but the schooner was under way, and kept just about the same distance ahead of them all night. The next day they could still see her, with her flag at half-mast for them; but they couldn’t get near enough for those on board to see them. After they lost sight of her they were out two days longer, both of them bright and clear. During that time they sighted and chased five more vessels. Then the fog shut down again, and an hour afterwards they were nearly run down by the schooner that picked them up. Now, if they’d been in the fog all the time they would have taken things a great deal more easy, and probably got picked up just as quick.”

“Yes,” admitted Wolfe, “that all may be very true; but I’m afraid there’s another side to it. Hark! didn’t you hear a whistle?” he exclaimed, resting on his oars to listen.

The next moment it came to them plainly, the hoarse warning whistle of some great steamer. At first they could not locate the sound; but as they heard it again, and this time much nearer, they fixed it as coming from the direction in which they were heading, and knew that it proceeded from some transatlantic liner, bound eastward. Then they became filled with a fever of apprehension, of mingled hopes and fears. What if she should run them down? What if she should pick them up? What if she should pass without seeing or hearing them? These were the questions they asked each other over and over again during the few minutes that elapsed before the vast, formless object rushed by them still concealed by the fog, but so near that they could hear voices from her decks. They had not been seen, nor were their frantic shouts heeded, if they had been heard.

In deep, dejected silence they sat motionless, listening to the sound of the whistle until it was lost in the distance. Then Wolfe said, “That’s the other side to it.”

“Yes,” replied Breeze, “and it’s a pretty dark side to have to look at too. If the fog had only lifted, ever so little, even for one minute, we might be on board that steamer safe and comfortable now, on our way to--I don’t knew where and I shouldn’t have cared. At any rate, we wouldn’t be here, lost, starved, and drifting through a fog-bank.” The boy’s tone was very bitter, and it showed the heaviness of his heart.

“Take a biscuit, old man,” said Wolfe, sympathetically, “it’ll cheer you up.”

For a moment Breeze tried to look angry, at what he considered an ill-timed levity on the part of his companion; but the expression of the other’s face changed his mood, and he laughed in spite of his unhappiness.

“That’s right!” exclaimed Wolfe. “Laughing’s a sight more becoming to you than crying, and whenever you ‘Point True’ to yourself, it’s plenty of the first and little of the last you’ll be indulging in.”

“But it is hard to bear such a disappointment. Just think how near she came to us!”

“Faith! It might have gone harder with us if she’d come nearer. For my