"You're frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got round more to the south; so we'll be able to run back to Portsmouth in no time.

The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a wind!" However, "Man proposes and God disposes." The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of running in homewards "in no time," the cutter, after a time, became becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open Channel again.
Dick was the first to notice this.
"Look, Master Bob!" he cried.

"We aren't making no headway at all! I don't see we're getting any the nearer to the Nab!" "We will, soon," replied Bob, all hopeful.

"It's only because the breeze has dropped a bit.

Before long, we'll pick it up again! I think, Dick, we'd better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away more!" This was done; but, still the _Zephyr_ would not move.
She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies swayed her in this direction and that.
"I knewed we was doin' wrong," remarked Dick presently, after a long silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word.