CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.
ANXIOUS TIMES.
The boat continued driving before the wind for some little time, until the mountain cliffs of Inaccessible Island gradually lost their contour.
They had become but a mere haze in the distance, when Eric, who had been intently gazing upward at the sky since Fritz's last speech of alarm, and seemed buried in despondency, suddenly appeared to wake up into fresh life.
He had noticed the clouds being swept rapidly overhead in the same direction in which the boat was travelling; but, all at once, they now appeared to be stationary, or else, the waves must be bearing their frail little craft along faster than the wind's speed.

What could this puzzling state of things mean?
Eric reflected a moment and then astonished Fritz as they both sat in the stern-sheets, by convulsively grasping his hand.
"The wind has turned, brother!" he cried out in a paroxysm of joy.
Fritz thought he was going mad.

"Why, my poor fellow, what's the matter ?" he said soothingly.
"Matter, eh ?" shouted out Eric boisterously, wringing | his brother's hand up and down.

"I mean that the wind has changed! It is chopping round to the opposite | corner of the compass, like most gales in these latitudes, that's what's the matter! See those clouds there ?" Fritz looked up to where the other pointed in the sky--to a spot near the zenith.
"Well," continued the lad, "a moment ago those clouds there were whirling along the same course as ourselves.

Then, when I first called out to you, they stopped, as if uncertain what to do; while now, as you can notice for yourself, they seem to be impelled in the very opposite direction.