The wind held at south-west for three days, blowing heavily the whole time.  By the second night-fall the sea was clear of ice, and everything was carried on the schooner that she could bear.  About nine o’clock on the morning of the fourth day out, a speck was seen rising above the ragged outline of the rolling waves; and each minute it became higher and more distinct.  An hour or two later, the Sea Lion was staggering along before a westerly gale, with the Hermit of Cape Horn on her larboard beam distant three leagues.  How many trying scenes and bitter moments crowded on the mind of young Roswell Gardiner, as he recalled all that had passed in the ten months which intervened since he had come out from behind the shelter of those wild rocks!  Stormy as was that sea, and terrible as was its name among mariners, coming, as he did, from one still more stormy and terrible, he now regarded it as a sort of place of refuge.  A winter there, he well knew, would be no trifling undertaking, but he had just passed a winter in a region where even fuel was not to be found, unless carried there.  Twenty days later the Sea Lion sailed again from Rio, having sold all the sea-elephant oil that remained, and bought stores; of which, by this time, the vessel was much in want.  Most of the portions of the provisions that were left had been damaged by the thawing process; and food was getting to be absolutely necessary to her people, when the schooner went again into the noble harbour of the capital of Brazil.  Then succeeded the lassitude and calms that reign about the imaginary line that marks the circuit of the earth, at that point which is ever central as regards the sun, and where the days and nights are always equal.  No inclination of the earth’s axis to the plane of its orbit affected the climate there, which knew not the distinctions of summer and winter; or which, if they did exist at all, were so faintly marked as to be nearly imperceptible.

Twenty days later the schooner was standing among some low sandy keys, under short canvass, and in the south-east trades.  By her movements an anchorage was sought; and one was found at last, where the craft was brought up, boats were hoisted out, and Roswell Gardiner landed.

Chapter XXIX.

  If every ducat in six thousand ducats
  Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,
  I would not draw them; I would have my bond.

  Shakspeare.

The earth had not stopped in its swift face round the sun at Oyster Pond, while all these events were in the course of occurrence in the antarctic seas.  The summer had passed, that summer which was to have brought back the sealers; and autumn had come to chill the hopes as as the body.  Winter did not bring any change.  Nothing was heard of Roswell and his companions, nor could anything have been heard of them short of the intervention of a miracle.