My sloop on this course ran under reefed sails for days together.

I naturally tired of the never-ending motion of the sea, and, above all, of the wetting I got whenever I showed myself on deck.

Under these heavy weather conditions the _Spray_ seemed to lag behind on her course; at least, I attributed to these conditions a discrepancy in the log, which by the fifteenth day out from Keeling amounted to one hundred and fifty miles between the rotator and the mental calculations I had kept of what she should have gone, and so I kept an eye lifting for land.

I could see about sundown this day a bunch of clouds that stood in one spot, right ahead, while the other clouds floated on; this was a sign of something.

By midnight, as the sloop sailed on, a black object appeared where I had seen the resting clouds.