CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
TAKING AN INVENTORY.
The westerly wind being, of course, fair for the _Pilot's Bride_ in her run back to Tristan d'Acunha, she soon disappeared in the distance--the snow-capped cone of the larger island being presently the only object to be seen on the horizon, looking in the distance like a faint white cloud against the sky.

The evening haze shut out everything else from their gaze: the lower outlines of the land they had so recently left: the vessel that had conveyed them to their solitary home.
Nothing was to be seen but the rolling tumid sea that stretched around them everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, heaving and swelling and with the breeze flecking off the tops of the billows into foam as its resistless impetus impelled them onwards, away, away! "Well," exclaimed Eric, after a long pause, during which neither of the brothers had spoken, both being anxiously watching the _Pilot's Bride_-- until, first, her hull and then her gleaming sails, lit up for awhile by the rays of the setting sun, had sunk out of sight--"well, here we are at last!" "Yes, here we are," said Fritz, "and we've now got to make the best of our little kingdom with only our own companionship." "We won't quarrel, at all events, brother," replied Eric, laughing in his old fashion at the possibility of such a thing.

The lad was quite overwrought with emotion at parting with the old skipper as well as his late companions in the ship; and, tears and mirth being closely allied, he would have felt inclined to laugh at anything then--just because he couldn't cry! "I don't suppose we will," said the other--"that is, not intentionally.
But, brother, we will have to guard our tempers with a strong hand; for, when two persons are thrown together in such close association as we shall be during the next ensuing months--with no one else to speak to and no authority to control us, save our own consciences and the knowledge of the all-seeing Eye above, weighing and considering our actions--it will require a good deal of mutual forbearance and kindly feeling on the part of one towards the other to prevent us from falling out sometimes, if only for a short while.

Even brothers like us, Eric, who love each other dearly, may possibly fall out under such trying circumstances!" "Aye, but we mustn't," said Eric.

"Instead of falling out, we'll fall into each other's arms whenever we agree to differ, as old nurse Lorischen would have said!" and he gave his brother an enthusiastic hug as he spoke, putting his words into action with a suddenness that almost threw Fritz off his feet.
"Hullo!" exclaimed the latter good-humouredly, smiling as he disengaged himself from Eric's bear-like embrace.