“But, aunty dear, it is not always noon at London when it is noon at New York.”

“Fiddle-faddle, child; noon is noon, and there are no more two noons than two suns, or two times.  Distrust what young men tell you, Rosy, if you would be safe, though they should tell you you are handsome.”

Poor Rose sighed, and gave up the explanation in despair.  Then a smile played around her pretty mouth.  It was not at her aunt that she smiled; this she never permitted herself to do, weak as was that person, and weak as she saw her to be; she smiled at the recollection how often Mulford had hinted at her good looks—­for Rose was a female, and had her own weaknesses, as well as another.  But the necessity of acting soon drove these thoughts from her mind, and Rose sought Jack Tier, to confer with him on the subject of their new duties.

As for Harry Mulford, his head was no sooner laid on its bunch of sail than he fell into a profound sleep.  There he lay, slumbering as the seaman slumbers, with no sense of surrounding things.  The immense fatigues of that and of the two preceding days,—­for he had toiled at the pumps even long after night had come, until the vessel was clear,—­weighed him down, and nature was now claiming her influence, and taking a respite from exertion.  Had he been left to himself, it is probable the mate would not have arisen until the sun had reappeared some hours.

It is now necessary to explain more minutely the precise condition, as well as the situation of the schooner.  On quitting his port, Mulford had made a stretch of some two leagues in length, toward the northward and eastward, when he tacked and stood to the southward.  There was enough of southing in the wind, to make his last course nearly due south.  As he neared the reef, he found that he fell in some miles to the eastward of the islets,—­proof that he was doing very well, and that there was no current to do him any material harm, if, indeed, there were not actually a current in his favour.  He next tacked to the northward again, and stood in that direction until near night, when he once more went about.  The wind was now so light that he saw little prospect of getting in with the reef again, until the return of day; but as he had left orders with Jack Tier to be called at twelve o’clock, at all events, this gave him no uneasiness.  At the time when the mate lay down to take his rest, therefore, the schooner was quite five-and-twenty miles to windward of the Dry Tortugas, and some twenty miles to the northward of the Florida Reef, with the wind quite light at east-south-east.  Such, then, was the position or situation of the schooner.